With the television silent, Marion could hear the refrigerator starting in the kitchen. She told Frank she had an address for Thomas Reed in Midlothian, Virginia. Saying the place aloud gave it an undeserved solidity. It sounded like the answer to a question, when it was only another piece of information. Frank looked toward the stairs, where her household papers were kept, but did not ask to see it. “What would you do with that?” he asked. She rubbed the place on her palm where the little button had rested. “Let someone check what I can’t.”
The following morning she cleared a space beside the sewing machine and took a scrap of paper from beneath a pattern envelope. On one side were measurements for a skirt she had finished months earlier. On the other she wrote the familiar name, then the address. Beneath those she began a sentence about the face on television. Halfway through, she stopped. The words looked more confident than her memory felt. She had written that the bust showed her former neighbor. She drew a line through showed and put resembled above it. The correction made the sentence longer and more honest.
There were things she could say without borrowing certainty. She had known a man called Thomas Reed in Denver. The printed age enhancement in 1987 had reminded her of him. The plaster face presented on television in 1989 had done so again. She could supply an address. Beyond that lay an inviting country of guesses. She began to write that he had always seemed quiet, then crossed it out. Quiet described half the people she knew before their second cup of coffee. It explained nothing about the man and too much about her wish to make the past orderly.
Ruth came by that afternoon to collect a dress Marion had shortened. She remained near the door with her purse over her shoulder while Marion fetched it from the bedroom. The dress was wrapped in a clean pillowcase to keep off loose threads. Marion handed it over before mentioning the address. She wanted one obligation completed before she introduced another uncertainty. “I mean to pass along what I have,” she said. “Not tell people who he is. Give them somewhere to look.” Ruth set the wrapped dress on a chair. “And how are you planning to do that?”
Marion said she intended to ask Daniel to telephone the FBI. Ruth’s expression changed, not dramatically, but enough to make Marion hear how conveniently she had arranged the sentence. Daniel would make the call; Marion would wait. “Why does he become responsible for carrying it?” Ruth asked. Marion started to say that he would be better at explaining, then stopped. That was not something she knew. It was something she hoped would make the request less frightening. “I want help,” she said instead. “That isn’t the same as his owing it to me.” Ruth lowered her purse onto the chair.
They sat at the kitchen table. Marion showed her the scrap, keeping one hand beside it rather than pushing it across as though it required a signature. Ruth read the corrected sentence first. “You understand he might say no.” “Yes.” “Without having to persuade you for an hour.” Marion felt the sting of being known in an unflattering way. She had spent whole evenings making uncertainty into a task for somebody else. “Without that,” she agreed. Ruth touched the edge of the paper. “And this isn’t permission from me.” Marion said she understood, although understanding did not make the room easier.
After Ruth left, Marion returned the empty pillowcase to the linen shelf. She had not asked her daughter whether the resemblance was strong enough. That was progress of a narrow sort. She had also watched Ruth weigh another possible demand against work, home, and a child’s arrangements. Those things would remain real whether the man in Virginia proved to be Edwin Vale or someone wrongly suspected. Marion sat down again and added a sentence promising that she would accept whatever happened. She stared at it, then struck it through. She could promise conduct, not a feeling she had not yet had.
Frank came home with a small packet of screws for the loose kitchen hinge. She moved her paper so he could set them down. There was no need to explain the entire afternoon before he could repair a cupboard. While he worked, she read her note once more. She removed the account of her sleeplessness, the sentence about how long she had worried, and the explanation of why she wanted Daniel’s help. None would help establish a stranger’s identity. At last she crossed out every sentence except the resemblance, the name she knew, and the address.