Page 14 of Pocket Wife

I should correct her. I should say documents are often misplaced, archives degrade, clerks make errors, frontier systems fail.

Instead, I see the wrong dates, the false dormant field, the incomplete survey reference, and the missing thirty-two years.

“Removed,” I say.

The word changes the room.

I seal the case and open a formal inquiry request on my wrist display. This time, I don’t file it as a routine preservation review.

I mark it as suspected historical tampering.

The archive recorder chimes softly.

Outside the records room, someone knocks again, carrying more of the valley’s past toward the table.

I consider the soil still caught in my glove seal, then the empty space in the index where history should be.

Something in the silence of the records feels deliberate now.

CHAPTER 7

LUCY

By noon, I have a list of names, three borrowed carts, and more volunteers than I can use.

The cooperative hall has become too crowded for clear thinking. People keep arriving with papers clutched to their chests, asking whether their family records matter, whether Helix can ignore burial claims, whether Rethan’s new inquiry means they’re safe. I answer what I can and refuse to lie about the rest.

Safe is too large a word for the third day after ships came down.

So I choose useful instead.

“We need memories older than the field maps,” I tell the group gathered near the hall doors. “Not guesses. Names, dates, landmarks, who planted where, who paid water tax, who witnessed a boundary agreement. If your grandparents told the same story every winter until you could recite it half-asleep, I want it written down.”

Someone asks, “Will stories count?”

I glance toward the records table where Rethan stands reviewing another ledger. “They will if we tie them to dates.”

He glances up at that, as if he’s heard his own thinking in my mouth and doesn’t know whether to approve.

Good. Let him wonder.

Our first visit takes us to Old Nara Venn, who lives in a stone cottage beyond the lower orchard with a roof patched in three colors and a gate that squeals like it objects to visitors. Nara is ninety-four, sharp-eyed, and wrapped in a green shawl despite the heat. She refuses to speak until I accept tea and Rethan accepts nothing, which earns him a look of immediate suspicion.

“Too tall to trust,” Nara says.

Rethan inclines his head. “That is not a legal standard I have encountered.”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

Nara likes him after that, though she pretends not to.

She remembers the Kest field before it had a parcel number. She remembers a spring flood that washed out the first stone markers. She remembers my grandfather standing waist-deep in mud with two other men, arguing over where the canal bend truly began.

“And Breccan?” Rethan asks, recording with permission.

Nara snorts. “Never heard that name until last night.”

“Could a trust have purchased access without local knowledge?”