Thursday morning, the day after Mariah Blackwood-Cates had called the changed boundary a known consequence of the flood, Eleanor Vance pushed open the heavy door of the county courthouse. The building smelled of wax and old paper. She wiped her shoes on the mat and crossed the marble lobby to the archives window.
A young clerk in a gray cardigan looked up from her phone. "Can I help you?"
"I'd like to see the deed-transfer logs and survey logbooks for the second half of 1994," Eleanor said.
"Nineteen ninety-four." The clerk set the phone face down. "Which book numbers?"
"I don't have the book numbers. I need the ones covering July through December."
"That's a long time ago." The clerk tapped at a keyboard that looked older than she was. "Those are in the basement storage room. I can't bring them up."
"Why not?"
"Water damage. From the flood." She said it as if the flood had happened last spring. "The boxes sat in standing water before anybody got down there after the storm. The pages are stuck together."
"May I see them anyway?"
The clerk shook her head. "They've been pulled. Turned to mush. The supervisor sent them out for review, and they came back unreadable."
"Is there a finding aid? An index of what was logged?"
"There's a list by book number, but that won't help you for that period." The clerk ran a finger down a clipboard. "The only person who might still remember those transactions is Lillian Gaines. She was the Clerk of Court back then."
"Where would I find Mrs. Gaines?"
"She's retired now. Lives out at the Laurel Ridge Assisted Living Center." The clerk slid a scrap of paper across the counter. "Here's the address. You can call the front desk, but she's usually in the common room after lunch."
"Thank you."
The clerk picked up her phone again. "Good luck."
Eleanor walked back down the courthouse steps. The October sun had burned off the morning fog, and the bronze statue on the front lawn cast a long shadow toward Main Street. She thought about Thomas Blackwood's linen survey, the 1993 lines inked with a draftsman's care. A man that methodical did not file a fifty-acre boundary change without a note. If the county logbooks were unreadable, that did not erase the transaction. It only buried it deeper.
She drove out of downtown past Piggly Wiggly, where the marquee advertised a $4.99 autumn squash sale, and merged onto Highway 19. A green sign for the Laurel Ridge Assisted Living Center pointed left after a Bojangles. Eleanor turned, her wallet on the passenger seat because she had stopped for gas and bought a Cheerwine at the counter. The two-lane climbed past a tourist apple orchard and a hand-lettered sign for boiled peanuts.
At the center, a receptionist in lavender scrubs looked up from a desk. "Can I help you?"
"I'm here to see Lillian Gaines," Eleanor said.
"She's in the common room. Through those double doors, second right."
"Thank you."
The common room was sunny and warm, with wicker chairs and a view of the mountains. Lillian Gaines sat by the window, a crochet blanket over her knees. Her hair was white and set in careful waves. She looked up as Eleanor approached.
"Mrs. Gaines? I'm Eleanor Vance. I was hoping you might help me with a records question."
Lillian smiled. "Call me Lillian. Sit. Don't stand there like the home-health girl." She pointed to a chair. "The coffee here tastes like pencil water, but I can have them bring tea."
"Thank you, no. I left the courthouse."
"That place." Lillian waved a hand. "They don't know a deed from a dinner napkin now. When I was Clerk of Court, every paper was where it belonged."
"I'm sure it was."
"Well, nobody ever asked me, but I've been in this town eighty years." Lillian leaned forward, rounding up from seventy-eight the way she rounded most things. "I know every deed, every survey, every squabble over a property line. What are you looking for?"
Eleanor sat and set her bag on the floor. "I'm looking into the Blackwood tract. A fifty-acre parcel moved between two ownership lines sometime in the second half of 1994."
Lillian's eyebrows rose. "Is that so? That was a terrible autumn. The flood, the bridge, Thomas Blackwood gone." She clicked her tongue. "The whole town was mud and funerals for weeks."
"The current records don't explain why the boundary changed."
"Of course they don't." Lillian smoothed the blanket. "The flood changed every line in this valley. Silas Blackwood handled the family papers afterward. He was never a man who liked explaining things."
"So you remember the filing?"
"I was Clerk of Court. I recorded what people brought me." Lillian waved a hand. "That autumn was a blur. The flood, the funerals, half the basement under water."
Eleanor kept her voice even. "Do you recall whether Thomas Blackwood filed any surveys that same year?"
"Thomas?" Lillian looked toward the window. Her voice lowered. "Thomas was careful. I'll grant you that. But his papers didn't all make it through the flood."
"What about the deed-transfer logs for July through December?"
Lillian's fingers stopped moving over the blanket. "Those old books are a hopeless mess. Water got them. You won't find a word."
"I don't need the books. I was hoping you might remember the transactions."
"I've retired, Eleanor. I don't keep those records in my head anymore." Lillian's smile returned, but it was smaller. "You should let that whole thing alone. It's old family business."
Eleanor leaned forward. "Mrs. Gaines, I'm not asking about family business. I'm asking about a recorded boundary change. Thomas Blackwood was too meticulous a surveyor to sign off on a fifty-acre change without a note."
Lillian's hands went still in her lap. She looked past Eleanor to the window and said, quietly, "You won't find anything in those books. It's all a mess now. Best to let sleeping dogs lie."
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