Chapter 4 A Different Kind of Man #2
I pull the credit card statements next. The first card has a balance of forty-two hundred dollars.
I scan the charges. Gas. Groceries. Normal things.
But then I see charges I don't recognize.
Restaurants I've never been to. A hotel in Bridgeport.
Two charges at a jewelry store in the mall.
A weekend stay at a bed and breakfast in the valley that Kirk told me was a work conference.
The second card is worse. The balance is over seven thousand dollars. Most of the charges are Kirk's. Electronics. Clothing stores. More restaurants. More hotels. He's been spending on both cards and I've been carrying the liability because my name is on them too.
I print everything. Every page. I organize them in a folder and label it for Fiona. Then I close the laptop and sit at the kitchen table staring at the stack of paper.
Twenty-four thousand dollars I put into that savings account.
Almost forty-two hundred in debt on one card.
Over seven thousand on the other. Kirk wasn't just lying about the affair.
He was lying about everything. The money I thought we were saving for a house together.
The debt I didn't know existed. The entire financial foundation of our future was fiction and I was too trusting to look closely enough to see it.
I go to bed exhausted. Not the tired that comes from physical work. The tired that comes from learning things you didn't want to know.
Friday morning I get to City Hall early and find Rowena waiting for me in the Records Department.
"Good morning, Brook. Are you ready for the archives transfer? I'd like you to take the first set of documents over to the County Archives this morning. Mr. Hughes is expecting you."
"Absolutely. I'll pull the boxes and head over."
I spend the next half hour selecting the first batch of records for transfer. I choose three boxes of documents from the 1890s and early 1900s. Property deeds mostly. Some early plat maps. A few original council meeting minutes. I load them onto a rolling cart and push them to the front entrance.
The County Archives building is directly across the street from City Hall.
I've walked past it hundreds of times over the past eight years but I've never been inside.
It's smaller than I expected. The entrance leads to a short hallway that opens into a large main room filled with metal shelving units and file cabinets and climate-controlled storage cases.
The room smells like old paper and wood polish. It's cool and quiet.
A man is standing at a long worktable near the center of the room. He has brown hair and glasses and he's bent over a large document spread flat on the table. He's wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his hands are covered in white cotton gloves. He looks up when I come in.
"You must be Brook Walker," he says. He straightens up and pulls off one glove to shake my hand. "I'm Ross Hughes. Rowena told me you'd be coming by."
"Nice to meet you. I have the first batch of records from City Hall."
"Perfect. Let me help you with those."
He comes around the table and takes the cart from me.
He pushes it carefully to a designated area near the back of the room where a set of empty shelves has been prepared.
He moves deliberately. Not slow. Just careful.
The way you move when you're used to handling things that are old and fragile and irreplaceable.
"I've been looking forward to this project," he says as he begins unloading the first box. "Rowena mentioned you have documents going back to the 1890s. We don't see a lot of material that old coming through here."
"Some of it is in pretty rough shape. The property deeds from the first decade are on paper that's starting to deteriorate. I've been worried about them for a while."
"You've been worried about hundred-year-old documents?" He looks at me and there's something warm in his expression. Not amusement exactly. More like recognition.
"I know that sounds odd. But those records tell the history of this town. Every property that was ever bought or sold or passed down through a family. If we lose them we lose the proof that any of it happened."
"It doesn't sound odd at all. That's exactly why this facility exists."
We spend the next forty minutes going through the boxes together.
Ross examines each document carefully and makes notes in a logbook.
He asks me about the provenance of each record.
When it was filed. How it's been stored.
Whether I noticed any specific areas of damage.
His questions are thoughtful and specific and he listens to my answers with genuine attention.
He doesn't rush the conversation. He doesn't check his phone.
He doesn't nod along while clearly thinking about something else.
I notice this. All of it. I notice it because for the past nine years I've been talking to a man who did all of those things constantly and I accepted it as normal.
"I'll get these catalogued and assessed by the end of next week," Ross says when we finish.
"Then I can give you a report on what kind of preservation work each document needs.
Some of these might be candidates for deacidification treatment.
Others might need encapsulation. I won't know until I do a full evaluation. "
"That would be wonderful. I can bring the next batch over whenever you're ready."
"How about Tuesday? That gives me the weekend to get through these."
"Tuesday works."