"Mrs. Ainsworth. One question."
Chloe Hassan had the recorder running before Harriet Ainsworth got the folder switched to her other arm. Twenty-eight years old, canvas bag, notebook held out in front of her the way people hold a plate at a potluck.
"Not Mrs.," Harriet said. "And put that away."
"I filed a public records request with the manager's office nine days ago." Chloe pulled a folded letter from the notebook and held it up. Town letterhead, and at the bottom a signature in blue. "They denied it Thursday. Personnel matters. Deliberative process. I don't know what half of those words are supposed to mean."
Harriet took the letter. "Come into my office."
"Is that a yes?"
"It's a door."
Upstairs in the Town Hall, the clerk's office sat at the end of the second-floor corridor: one window over the granite steps on Main Street, a radiator that knocked twice an hour, and a 1911 map of Havenwood nobody had ever asked her to take down. Harriet set the folder on the corner of her desk and sat. Chloe took the chair, parked a large iced coffee from Dunkin' on the coaster without being invited to, and left the recorder off. Harriet noticed both.
"He calls you Ellen," Chloe said.
"He does."
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"Not as much as it bothers Martha."
Chloe wrote something down, which meant it bothered her. "So. Is it true you and Marcus Thorne are at war?"
"Where'd you learn to write a request?"
"Journalism school. Ask for everything and let them sort it out."
"That's how you get a denial."
"I got one anyway."
"Because you asked for everything." Harriet squared the letter on the desk pad. "Read me your request."
"'All emails, memoranda, notes, calendars, and directives concerning the Historical Society.'"
"For eighteen months."
"For eighteen months."
"There's your trouble. A request that wide only needs one exemption to sink the whole thing. Narrow it. One week of the manager's calendar per request."
Martha Jenkins appeared in the doorway with the day's mail. "Harriet, the assessor wants — oh."
"It's fine, Martha."
"Do you want the door shut?"
"Yes. Thank you. Hold the calls till four."
The door clicked. Martha's footsteps went off down the corridor toward the vault, past the step stool with the split tread, and Harriet turned back to her visitor.
"Five business days," she said. "That's the law, not a suggestion. Five business days to answer you in writing. If they deny it, they have to name the exemption they're using and tell you how to appeal."
Chloe wrote that down, fast and slanted. "They said it would take the office weeks of staff time."
"Did they give you an estimate in writing?"
"No."
"Then they didn't give you an estimate. They gave you a sentence."
The phone rang. Harriet picked it up on the second ring. "Clerk's office."
"Harriet, it's Sam. You got a minute?"
"Not one I can spend."
"Yup. Whole town's saying the Chronicle's in your stairwell."
"She's in my chair, actually."
There was a pause on the line, a man deciding to say less. "You know what you're doing?"
"I'm about to find out."
"That's a no."
"Goodbye, Sam."
She hung up. Across the desk, Chloe had stopped writing and was watching her.
"So what do I ask for?"
"His calendar for the second half of August. One week per request. Specific is fast."
"August."
"August is a month."
Harriet set her pen back in the tray. Chloe's eyes came up.
"That's a very careful sentence."
"I'm a careful person." Harriet moved the coffee off the coaster and set it on the desk pad, which was a thing she did when she wanted a second to think. "Then ask for every memo and directive out of that office since his first day. Number them. And if they withhold a page, ask for a log."
"A log."
"They have to tell you they pulled it and which exemption covers it."
"What about his email?"
"Ask for correspondence with anyone outside town government about the Historical Society property." She straightened the letter, though it was already straight. "Don't put names in the request. Let the records name them."
Chloe looked at her a long moment, and Harriet let her. Below the window, three maples on the green had gone red since the cold snap. The Historical Society's slate roof showed over the bank, a quarter mile off, the way it had since before either of them was born.
"The deed," Chloe said. "Should I ask for the deed?"
"The deed's public. You can walk in that door any weekday between eight and four and read it. You don't need a request for the deed."
"Then why did I file one?"
"Because nobody told you the first thing."
Chloe laughed once, short and surprised. Harriet didn't.
"Can I file by email?"
"Yes. Put 'public records request' in the subject line so nobody can say they never saw it, and keep every copy. If they quote you a fee, they have to estimate it first, and you get to say no and narrow the ask."
"Copies?"
"A nickel a page in this office. Bring exact change and Martha will like you."
"What if they sit on it?"
"Then the five days run out. Being late is its own kind of answer."
Chloe capped her pen. The noon whistle went at the firehouse, one long note, and Main Street filled up with car doors and the smell of O'Connell's fryer.
"This is going to land on your desk," Chloe said.
"It'll land on the clerk's desk. I'm the deputy."
"That's my point."
"Then you'll get the right answer. That's all you're getting from me."
Chloe stood and tucked the notebook under her arm. At the door she hesitated with her hand on the knob, which was the first thing all hour that looked like her age.
"Mrs. Ainsworth—"
"Harriet."
"Harriet. If I file these, it stops being about a quote."
"Correct."
"And if I don't, I've got a letter with a blue signature on it and a story I can't write."
"That's about the size of it."
"Off the record. Why are you doing this?"
"I'm the deputy town clerk of Havenwood," Harriet said. "The record is what I keep."
Chloe opened the door. "Five business days," she said, and it came out less like a question than it had ten minutes ago.
"Five business days."
The door shut. Harriet listened to the stairs take her down, quick, two at a time, then the brass rattle of the front door. After that there was only the radiator and the map.
On the desk pad lay the yellow legal sheet she had turned around so Chloe could copy her phrasing: the exact words, in Harriet Ainsworth's own hand, that would make the town of Havenwood hand over Marcus Thorne's August. She folded it in half and put it in her coat pocket. It would ride home to Maple Street and go in the drawer under the 1824 ledger, and it would stay there until somebody asked for it in writing.
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