Her Own Name First

Celia had measured the gap between the two tables three times. There was room to pass without brushing the stacked salt pages, even with a tray in hand. That was useful to know. It did nothing to help her begin.

Mira stood by the chapel window, folding and unfolding a scrap of brown paper. Below, carts rattled over the quay stones. She had not asked Celia to leave. She had not asked her to stay.

“I owe you an apology,” Celia said.

Mira pressed a crease flat with her thumbnail. “For which part?”

A fair question. Celia set her notebook on the nearest table, away from the pages. “When Sister Ilse told us about your mother, I began asking how the mayor’s family might fit the records. You had asked whether we valued your testimony before we knew who your grandfather was. I answered by making you into another piece of evidence.”

“You wanted the dates.”

“I did. I should have stopped.”

Mira turned the paper over. Its corners had gone soft from her hands. “You looked at me like I’d turned into a street sign.”

Celia had looked at the register first, then at Mira, then back at the register. She could recall the sequence perfectly. It offered no defense. “I’m sorry.”

Outside, someone called for a cart to back up. Its wheels struck the curb with a hard clack.

“I was telling you I didn’t know what any of it meant,” Mira said. “And you asked Ilse whether the mayor’s name appeared anywhere else.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t ask me if I wanted to hear another word.”

Celia drew a breath. An account of her intentions waited ready on her tongue, neat as figures in a column. None of it changed where Mira had been standing or what Celia had said. “I didn’t.”

The paper stopped moving. Mira looked down at it for a while, then laid it on the sill. “I spent years trying not to say names where people could hear. Now there’s one everyone will want me to say.”

“Not from me.”

“That’s easy in this room.”

“Yes,” Celia said. “It is.”

Mira glanced over at her. The skin beneath her eyes was dark from a poor night’s sleep. Celia wanted to offer a chair, or tea, or some better proof than words. Instead she kept her hands at her sides.

“Jonah has the council minutes,” Mira said. “He’ll work it out.”

“He knows there was a mayor. He doesn’t know what Ilse told you. I won’t give him the link.”

“And if he asks me?”

“Then you can answer him.”

“That sounds simple when you say it.”

“I could add conditions until it sounded like a municipal ordinance.”

Mira’s mouth shifted, almost a smile. “You could.”

Celia pulled out a chair for herself but remained standing. “If you want the matter kept here, I’ll keep it here. If you want to tell Jonah, or no one, I won’t make an announcement ahead of you. Ilse told us because you gave her leave. I should have remembered that permission had limits.”

Mira picked up the paper again. “I don’t know what I want yet.”

“Then there’s no decision due today.”

For the first time since Celia had entered, Mira came away from the window. She sat opposite the empty chair, leaving the table between them. Celia sat too. The table smelled faintly of dried salt and the boiled cloth Ilse used to clean it.

“Does it change what I told you about the window?” Mira asked.

“No. The measurements still match.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Celia closed her notebook. She had been ready with the figures. Of course she had. “I believed you before yesterday,” she said. “I should have said so before trying to explain how you knew.”

Mira ran a thumb along the paper’s torn edge. “I might be wrong about some things.”

“So might I.”

“You generally bring a ruler to find out.”

“It has not improved my manners.”

This time Mira did smile, briefly. She folded the scrap once and put it in her pocket.

They spent the afternoon on work that needed no family names. Celia checked the copied street widths against her survey, while Mira sorted the dry pages by the marks along their edges. When Celia reached for a sheet that still held moisture near its binding edge, Mira tapped the table twice. Celia withdrew her hand and took the clean cloth Mira offered. Neither made a ceremony of it.

At dusk, Brenda sent word from the quay that another page had surfaced. Celia and Mira went down together. The stone steps were slick with spray, and the wind carried the sharp smell of split fish from the boats tied below. Brenda waited beside her skiff with the new sheet laid in a shallow dry crate. Its pale surface caught the last light.

“Fresh one,” Brenda said. “I kept my hands off the writing. You may thank me in coin when your profession begins paying properly.”

“Then our debt may outlive us,” Celia said.

Mira crouched beside the crate. She kept clear of the damp rim while Celia lifted the sheet by its dry corners with cloth-covered fingers. Lines crossed its surface in a tight plan of a house and the streets around it. A number stood beside the door mark. Beneath it, a name had formed with unusual care.

Artur Vellane.

Celia held the page still. The street and number below his name were complete. For weeks, addresses had ended at blocked passages or been cut from records. This one could be marked on a map.

Mira leaned closer, then drew back before her sleeve touched the sheet.

Brenda looked between them. “Good find?”

“It’s an address,” Celia said.

“Those usually are.”

Celia almost read it aloud. Mira’s grandfather’s home. Her grandfather’s name. Instead she turned the crate so Mira could see the whole line without bending toward the wet salt. Mira studied it, lips moving around the street name but making no sound.

“Can you place it?” Mira asked.

“Approximately. The older street widths may alter the position by several yards.”

“Several yards I can walk.”

“If you choose to.”

Brenda shifted her weight against the skiff. “I can take you near the lower steps tomorrow. Not promising what the tide will leave open.”

Mira stayed crouched. “I haven’t chosen yet.”

“Then I’m not taking you tomorrow.” Brenda picked up the crate lid. “Easy bargain.”

Back at the chapel, they laid the page to dry where it could not touch the others. Celia marked the address on a separate working chart in pencil, then stopped with the point resting on the paper. A circle would make it a destination. A firm line to the quay would make it a route. She wrote the address in the margin instead, leaving the space around it blank.

Mira watched from the other side of the table. “You can draw where it goes.”

“I can draw where the page says it goes. A visit is a different matter.”

“I want to see what’s there,” Mira said. “Not with Jonah. Not with Ilse standing over me in case I say something strange.”

Celia set down the pencil. “Would you like me to come?”

“Yes. And I want to be the one who speaks, if there’s anything to speak to.” Mira touched the edge of the chart, well away from the salt page. “If we learn something, it stays with us until I decide otherwise. Even if it helps the survey.”

“That may mean I can’t use it in the survey.”

“I know.”

Celia looked at the blank space she had left around the address. It could remain blank a little longer. “All right.”

Mira took the pencil from her and put a small mark beside the address, no larger than a pinhead. “We can start by finding the door,” she said. “After that, we ask.”