Chapter 6

Sunday night, after the dishes, Bay set her laptop on the counter and turned it around.

"Okay. The banner in the picture. I zoomed in as far as the pixels would go."

Inez put on her reading glasses.

STATE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH CONFERENCE. Below it, smaller: ANNUAL AWARDS BREAKFAST. Below that, a date.

"They put the program online," Bay said. "Every session, every speaker. It's still up."

She scrolled. Inez leaned in.

Friday, 8:30 a.m. Awards Breakfast, Grand Ballroom. Presentation of the Inspector of the Year Award - Marrow County, R. Tillery.

"That's him," Bay said. "That's his name in a program. Eight-thirty in the morning, three hundred miles away, and he wrote down nine-forty in our kitchen."

Inez sat down on the stool.

For two days she had been fighting about a thermometer. She had called a repair man for a cooler that was never broken. She had written down the hours of the morning like a schoolgirl doing homework. She had almost - almost - called Garland Teague back.

The number was never the point.

"Baby," she said. "Get the picture."

Bay had it. She had taken it Friday at 2:47 p.m., standing in the health department lobby six feet from the director's office door, and the phone had stamped it. She pulled it up and handed it over.

Inez looked at it the way she looked at a cut of meat she was deciding about.

"Who signs an appeal at the state?"

"I don't know. There's a number on the department website."

"Find it."

Bay found it. Office of Environmental Health, state department, capital. Appeals and county review. And under it, a name and a title.

Dr. E. Voss, Director.

Bay read it out loud and then stopped.

"Grandma."

Inez didn't move.

"Voss," Bay said. "Like the card."

In the register, taped to the inside of the lid where the change went, was a yellowed index card, older than Bay, older than the register itself. On it, in Inez's handwriting from a different decade, four words: Voss - no charge.

"Grandma. Who is he?"

Inez took her glasses off and folded them and put them in her apron pocket. She stood a long moment with her hand flat on the counter, next to the wooden spoon she kept behind the register.

"Bay," she said finally. "Go get the good printer paper out of the office. We're going to write this down, and we're going to send it to the state tonight, and I want it to look like something."

"Who is he?"

"Go on, now."

Bay went. Inez stood alone in her kitchen under the hanging light, and she opened the register, and she took the yellowed card out, and she turned it over in her fingers twice.

Then she put it in her apron pocket, next to the folded inspection report.