Celia caught me by the filing room on the second of April with a clipboard and the brisk, unhurried manner of someone who already expected a yes. "I need your initials on the complaint packet before it goes up with the quarterly review," she said. "Standard confirmation — that you checked it, nothing's sitting unresolved."
"Did you check it yourself?" I asked, more out of habit than suspicion.
"Ellis said he's finishing the forwarding today," she said. "I just need someone from the section to confirm before Thursday's review meeting. It's paperwork, Marlene, not an audit."
I thought about the envelope on the shelf, which I hadn't looked at again since the day Ellis folded those six sheets into it. I thought about Ellis's confident voice saying by Friday, more than two weeks ago now, and the fact that I'd never followed up to see whether he'd done what he said he would.
Ellis came through the filing-room doorway carrying an empty tray. I stopped him before he could pass. "Celia's asking me to confirm the complaints. You said you were forwarding them."
"This afternoon," he said. "I'll take care of the forwarding this afternoon."
"Where's the envelope now?"
"Shared cabinet, lower shelf. I moved the waiting things off the open shelf so they wouldn't get mixed into today's requests." He shifted the tray under his arm. "Nothing's missing, Marlene."
I had not asked whether anything was missing. I noticed that, and then noticed Celia looking toward the counter, where someone was calling for a supervisor. The interruption offered all three of us a convenient reason to make this quick.
"If there are still questions about the dates, put that on the cover," I told Ellis. "Don't wait on those."
"Understood." He gave me the brief nod we used across a crowded counter when one of us needed the other to take over. I had relied on that nod before, during mornings when Dean called from the shop and I needed to leave without explaining my household to everyone within hearing.
Celia pressed the clipboard against her folder to keep the sheets from slipping. "I need the confirmation, not a discussion in the doorway," she said. I could still have asked her to leave it with me. Instead I looked at Ellis, who had already started back toward the windows, and treated his promise as if it were the missing check.
"I can go pull it and look before I sign," I said, and meant it, in the moment I said it.
"You don't need to," Celia said, already moving toward her next task. "I trust your section. Just initial it so I can close out the file." She held out the clipboard, and on it was a single line: Packet reviewed, no outstanding items — and a blank beside it waiting for two letters.
I stood there longer than the moment required. It would have taken me ten minutes to walk to the shelf, pull the envelope, and see with my own eyes whether it had ever left the building. Ten minutes against a line on a clipboard that Celia was already treating as settled.
I initialed it. M.V., in the small, careful hand I used for anything official, and handed the clipboard back before I could think better of it.
"Good," Celia said, tucking it under her arm. "While I have you — the acting training assignment. I'd like to offer it to you formally, starting next month if the quarterly review goes clean. You'd be a good fit, and frankly, after this week, I want people in that role I don't have to double-check."
I felt something warm and surprised move through me, the particular relief of being chosen, of being told you are the kind of person who does not need checking. "I'd like that," I said. "Thank you, Celia."
"Don't thank me yet," she said, not unkindly. "Just keep your section clean through June. Then we can review continuing the acting assignment. This isn't a permanent appointment."
I walked back to my counter with the strange, light feeling of a problem solved by a signature, though I had verified nothing about the complaints themselves. I still had only Ellis's promise that he would forward them that afternoon. What I had given Celia, in ink, said something else: that I had checked and nothing remained outstanding. I told myself I would look later, when things were slower. If anything needed correcting, I could catch it then. Later felt, that afternoon, like a promise easy enough to keep.