Tess had called the number from Jo's call log. When she gave her name, Nell asked whether she still had June's papers. Tess said she did and suggested the bakery. Nell agreed.
Nell chose a table by the window where Bess had spoken to them. Tess had expected her to choose somewhere Tess would feel obliged to keep her voice down. Instead children were leaving crumbs on the floor and a man at the counter was loudly arguing about a missing sandwich. Tess could have said anything without being the most interesting person in the room.
Nell had a cup of tea and no food. The face was the one Bess had pointed out near the hotel, though close up she looked less like a woman caught in a transaction and more like someone whose sleep had been interrupted for a week.
“You came alone,” Nell said.
“Mara knows where I am.”
“She used to know where everyone was.”
Tess sat opposite her. She kept June's case at home. Nell noticed the empty chair beside her. “I didn't bring what you asked for,” Tess said.
“I hadn't asked yet.”
“You asked my friend. You asked my neighbor. You tried the hotel.”
“I was asking for pages about me.”
“Then why put my name on a room and pay for it yourself?”
“I thought if I was booked with you, they'd send the packet to the room. June used to have people collect for her. I didn't know she'd called to stop that.” Nell looked at her tea. “Once the clerk rang you, I knew I'd left them my name. Owen was still asking me for those pages.”
“You put my name on it without asking.”
Nell stirred her tea without adding anything. “June had a way of deciding what was about a person. It was usually the part she wrote down.”
Tess thought of the six crossed lines. The list had made her afraid for women who did not exist as separate people. That fear did not turn Nell's call to Jo into a kindness. “Alma knows June suspected you,” she said. “She knows the work entrance may be exposed. She has refused another move.”
The spoon stopped. Nell looked at Tess, then past her toward the counter. “June told her to stay?”
“Alma told June. She told us today. There's no Friday car.”
“June had a car arranged.”
“She arranged me too. Neither of us said yes.”
For the first time Nell seemed to lose the shape of what she had meant to say. She took the spoon out of the cup and laid it carefully on the saucer. “You don't know how often June made a plan while somebody else was still living the day she meant to rearrange.”
“I've known that since I was a child.”
“No. You knew it as a child. I knew it when the fare didn't cover waiting three hours in a hospital corridor because June had promised a woman I would stay.”
Tess could hear the grievance without making it pay for the rest. “You took money from Owen?”
Nell's eyes came back to her. “Is that in the book?”
“June suspected you gave him a route. Alma has the right to know exactly what he bought.”
“You brought me here to ask if June's last guess was right.”
“I came to tell you my name is done being yours.”
Nell laughed once, without humor. “She used six for me. You get one and it has to be sacred.”
“Yes,” Tess said. “It does.”
The man at the counter got his sandwich and left. The door swung shut behind him. Nell looked at the place he had been as if the answer to the quarrel might still be there.
“I used the names she gave me,” Nell said. “I never signed anybody's papers with them. I didn't take your bank account. I wanted the pages that could ruin my life.”
“You went to people who trust me to get them.”
“And now you know how it feels when a person decides your trust is a tool.” Nell pushed her tea aside. “You think I don't hear myself saying that? I do.”
Tess was surprised by the admission. It made her angrier that Nell could name the wrong and still sit here waiting for June's case. “If you have information Alma needs, give it to Ren. Alma can decide whether to hear you. You don't get the notebook for it.”
Nell stood. “Ren will take a statement and put a name on it. June used to understand why a name could get somebody followed.”
“Owen already knows you, Nell.”
Nell's hand closed around the back of her chair. “You saw him with me.”
“I saw him press you outside the hotel. I heard him say his name, but I couldn't hear what you were talking about.”
“Then don't talk like you know.”
Tess stayed seated. “You can stop calling as me now. You can stop asking where I'll be. Tell him, if he asks, I'm not taking Alma anywhere.”
Nell's expression changed at that last sentence. It was small, a flicker of calculation or fear; Tess could not know which. “You really are staying out of it,” Nell said.
“Alma decided. I am helping her tell the truth where she wants it told.”
“You make that sound easy.”
“It isn't.”
Nell put the chair back under the table, aligning it with the others. “I don't have the pages. You don't have the answer you came for.”
“I have said what I came to say.”
Outside, Tess watched Nell turn toward the bus shelter and then choose the other way down the street. Tess called Mara. She gave the meeting in plain pieces: Nell did not admit a sale, did not receive a page, and had heard Alma would not move. She did not mention the quick change in Nell's face; Tess was not willing to turn a glance into proof.
The library's public calendar still listed Tess's Friday event. Jo had told a false caller about it before knowing she was false. Tess opened the listing on her phone: a conversation with local families about books they had kept through moves, four o'clock Friday, free admission. She had chosen the topic months ago, before June's illness. She could not decide whether to cancel it on a bakery sidewalk because Nell had looked frightened. She went home and called the library to confirm the room was still booked.