“Lots of people have names starting with G in this county, Artie.”
“But not many of them leave a child in a beach changing stall with their family ring hidden in the towel,” I said.
“And look at this paper.”
I pointed to the black printed numbers at the bottom of the yellowed strip.
“It is a hospital discharge slip, but the top half is gone.”
“It is just scrap paper,” Chris said, his voice rising enough to make the waitress pause with her coffee pot.
“Clara, let me get a warm-up,” he called out to her, his voice rough.
She nodded, pouring the steaming coffee into his mug before moving to the next booth.
Chris stared into his mug, his thick shoulders hunched forward.
“Some things are better left on that beach, Artie.”
“My girls need their medical history,” I said.
“Emily is limping on her left side again, and the clinic doctor wants to know if it is a family trait.”
Chris took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes tracking a fly on the windowpane.
“She is eighteen, Artie.”
“She is just growing, or she strained it at school.”
“It is the same limp Helen had when her joint flared up,” I said.
“You remember how she used to sit on the porch with her leg iced.”
Chris gripped his mug with both hands, his knuckles turning white.
“You have a good life here,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“You have two healthy daughters, a roof over your head, and no one asking questions.”
“Why do you want to drag all that old mud back to the surface?”
“Because the truth does not stay buried forever, Chris.”
He let go of the mug and leaned back, his keys jingling again as he shifted his weight.
“I am telling you to let it go.”
“For your own sake, and for the girls.”
“You are my best friend,” I said, looking straight into his eyes.
“But you are acting like you are afraid of what I will find.”
Chris did not answer.
He pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from his pocket and threw it onto the table.
“I have a radiator to flush,” he said.
He stood up and walked out of the diner, the bell above the door ringing once behind him.
I sat in the booth alone, the smell of burnt bacon and stale coffee suddenly making my stomach turn.
Thirty years of friendship, and he had never walked away from me like that.
I picked up the ring and the yellowed paper slip with the missing corner, sliding them back into my pocket.
By eleven, the heat had begun to rise from the asphalt outside the county clinic records office.
The lobby was quiet, the only sound being the low hum of a ceiling fan overhead.
A young woman with a plastic name tag that read Sarah sat behind the glass partition.
I slid the torn slip of yellowed paper through the opening.
“Can you tell me what this code at the bottom belongs to?” I asked.
She picked up the paper with two fingers, turning it over to look at the blank back.
“This is very old paper,” she said.
“Our county records do not use this format anymore.”
“Is there any way to match the code to a specific hospital?” I asked.
She tapped a few keys on her computer, her eyes scanning the screen.
“The prefix SG at the start of the code was used by Savannah General,” she said.
“Specifically their private wing, back in the early two-thousands.”
“Could you look up the name of the patient associated with it?” I asked.
She shook her head, sliding the paper back to my side of the glass.
“Private wing records from that era are restricted to family members with a legal court order.”
“You would have to go to their main records office in Savannah to even request a search.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the paper back.
I walked out to the parking lot, the gravel crunching under my boots.
The air was hot and still, the humidity pressing down like a wet blanket.
I climbed into the cab of my truck and closed the door, shutting out the mid-day heat.
Savannah General was forty miles up the road, past the old marshes and the turn-off for the Gable estate.
Beatrice Gable, Helen’s mother, still lived in that big brick house with the iron gates.
She had never forgiven me for Helen’s death, even though the doctors said there was nothing anyone could have done.
I took the silver signet ring out of my pocket and looked at the engraved letter G. ...
