I read the printed lines, my fingers pressing against the edge of the paper. “October four is eight days before the official census data was even released to the public.”
“That is why I came to your office last night,” Don said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “I needed you to have the real population figures before they started changing the ledger.”
“They cannot change the official registry,” I said.
“They are already doing it,” Don said.
He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket, leaving his tea untouched.
I sat at my kitchen table at seven that evening with the duplicate copy of the 2010 boundary ledger I kept in my sewing closet. The yellowed parchment pages smelled of cedar and old paper, the binding worn thin from years of reference. Outside, the rain hit the windowpane with a steady, rhythmic beat.
I opened the new state population report on my tablet and began comparing the columns of numbers line by line.
The official count for the eastern tracts in the new report was four thousand residents lower than my duplicate record showed.
