Della Keene asked us to put down what we were doing before she told us Gordon Pell had been arrested. It was April 17, 2012. I had a payment question written on a slip beside the telephone, and afterward I remembered looking at it as though the answer might still be the most urgent thing in the room. Della spoke plainly. There had been an arrest. We were not to turn questions into answers we didn't possess.
Someone asked whether the office would close. Someone else asked what we should tell people who called. Della said necessary work would continue and that questions about the case should be directed to public information rather than answered from rumor. I kept my hands flat on my desk. I wanted to ask her what this meant about the statement, but not in front of everybody, and not because she owed me information she could not give.
When the others moved away, I stood in her doorway. She looked tired, though I couldn't tell whether that had begun this morning. "Is there something you need for today's work?" she asked.
"I don't know yet," I said. It was the most accurate answer I had given all morning. She nodded toward my desk, and I went back to the slip beside the telephone.
Gordon's work area drew my attention whenever I looked up. I could have found reasons to open a drawer: a missing form, an old calculation, something that might help me understand. Instead, I took the payment question to the files I ordinarily used. I had brought an unfamiliar record to the mayor. That did not make the rest of the office mine to search.
By afternoon, public reporting dated April 17 confirmed the arrest. I read the report twice, keeping the date on the page beside the words. An arrest was not a finding of guilt. Yet the ordinary sound of the copier seemed almost offensive, and then I was grateful for it. A person waiting for a copy did not need me to settle the meaning of the day before I handed it over.
Otis called that evening. He did not ask whether I had heard. "Come over tomorrow," he said. "I don't want to have this conversation with you watching the clock in your kitchen." I nearly told him I didn't watch the clock. Then I remembered all the meals I had ended by mentioning something waiting on my desk.
On April 18, he cleared the newspaper from his kitchen table before I sat down. There was no coffee ready. That small absence made me understand he had been waiting to decide what sort of visit this would be. "When did you first know?" he asked.
"I still don't know everything."
"That isn't what I asked."
I told him about requesting the complete statements while Gordon was away, about finding an account I didn't recognize, and about taking it to Della that fall. I told him she had confirmed contacting law enforcement. I did not give him a theory about what had happened afterward. There was enough I could say without borrowing knowledge from yesterday's news.
He listened without interrupting, his thumb working at a worn place on the table edge. "So when I thought you were just letting our plans slide, you had this sitting there too."
"Yes. But I didn't know it was theft. I had a question I couldn't answer."
"You could have told me you were carrying something you couldn't discuss."
I started to explain that saying even that much might have invited questions. He pushed his chair back an inch. "Lenora, I wasn't asking you for somebody else's records. I was asking whether you meant what you said to me."
I had no useful defense against that. I told him I had meant our plan, and that I had handled the waiting badly. He got up and filled the kettle. We did not settle the repair business or release the money he had frozen. When he placed a cup before me, he said, "Next time, tell me what you can. Don't make me guess whether I'm still in your life." I stayed until the tea was cold, without once asking the time.