“You remember my name,” Larry said.
“Looked you up, after you left. You earned a few medals in your time.”
“Really?” Amanda turned to look at him.
Larry changed the subject.
“We were wondering if you keep old telephone directories. Like from twenty years ago.”
“Sure. They help in a pinch when you’re writing obits—you can look back and find old neighbors to interview.”
“Can we get the ones for a few years before Dennis Owen died?”
“Give me a sec.” He meticulously lined up a column called Recipes from the Shore and then wiped his hands on a grayed towel. “Be right back.”
In a few minutes, he returned carrying a small stack.
“Mind if I ask who you’re looking for?”
“That custodian who went in after Dennis,” Larry said, dividing the stack between him and Amanda. “The cook said his name was Ralph. We figured there can only have been so many Ralphs who lived down here back then.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Got a place for us to look at these?”
“Wish you would have asked before. You can use the reading room. It’s where they came from.”
Amanda and Larry sat at a long wooden table smeared with dust. The shelves of the cold room were lined with old telephone directories, law books, ancient copies ofThe Associated Press Stylebook, and stacks of coastal tide tables.
Larry thumbed past ads for fishing guides and a crab shack up the road, and a man selling homemade razor clam shovels. He found the residential listings and began to read, amused. Whoever wrote the listings—maybe Dwight himself, bored—had added whatever the locals desired, whether it was their title, age, or occupation. One woman had listed herself as “homemaker extraordinaire.”
Amanda read next to him, turning the pages.
“Here’s a Ralph,” Larry said. “Hold on. His occupation is student. Never mind.”
He kept thumbing. Amanda read silently.
“Here’s one. Ralph Higgins,” she said.
She spun the directory around, showing him. There was an address listed, but no phone number. Larry checked his cell service and looked the place up. The map led to a remote-looking cliff off the highway.
“Want to go see?” he asked.
Dwight was still laying out his newspaper. He fiddled with an edge. There was a large blank space, Larry noticed, on the front page.
“Hey, hold on,” Dwight said, calling to Amanda. “I was wondering, since you’re trying to learn more about your brother, maybe I could write a story about it? Like, ‘Woman Looking for Information on Long-Lost Brother.’ Might be a nice little human-interest story, and people could come out of the woodwork for you.”
“Looks like you’re saving a spot for it,” Larry said, pointing.
“I was going to put a wire story there. Slow news week, and I’m tired of writing about storms. When I saw you two walking in, I thought, Hey, there’s a story there.”
Amanda looked at Larry.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Let’s talk about it.”
“Let me know as soon as you can,” Dwight said. “I go to press tonight.”
