The Names We Buried

Gabriel opened the rear door and moved the folded blanket off the seat.

“Do we need this?”

“No,” Adrien said.

The blanket had been there since a late station collection. He took it when Gabriel offered it, then stood with it over his arm while Isabel put her bag beside her brother. The files made the bottom sag.

He had carried heavier things for her without asking. Today he opened the boot and put the blanket inside.

Isabel checked the time on her phone.

“We’re ready.”

They left Alder Glen at the hour agreed the night before. Gabriel sat behind him. Isabel gave directions from the appointment message, although Adrien knew the road. At the junction she corrected herself, and he changed lanes when it was safe, without mentioning the route he would have taken.

A delivery van delayed them beside the shops. Gabriel leaned forward.

“Have you spoken to anyone there?”

“No.”

“Not even to say we’re coming?”

“You arranged it. I haven’t called.”

Isabel lowered the phone into her lap.

“Geneva messaged me this morning. She’s meeting us outside.”

“All right.”

He wanted to ask whether she had slept. He could remember her light under the bedroom door when he passed on his way downstairs before dawn. She had heard his step and switched it off. The question would tell her he had noticed.

At the next crossing he stopped for a woman struggling with a shopping trolley. Gabriel watched her pull its wheel free of the kerb.

“I told Tessa I can’t help tomorrow.”

Adrien kept his eyes on the crossing.

“Does she need the box from the utility room?”

“I said I’d leave it at the library tonight.”

“I can drive you.”

“I might walk.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Depends how much she puts in it,” Gabriel added.

Isabel looked out of the window. “Tell her to carry her own extension cables.”

“She says they’re communal.”

“Then the community can come and get them.”

Gabriel made a small sound that might have become a laugh on another afternoon. Adrien drove on, leaving them the last word.

The office occupied the first floor above a row of ordinary businesses. Nothing on the street announced what kinds of family disputes were discussed upstairs. Geneva waited near the entrance, wearing a coat Isabel had once described as too expensive to get rained on.

It was raining.

She put away her umbrella when Isabel approached and offered it handle first.

“Your bag’s getting wet.”

Isabel took it. Gabriel moved underneath and immediately caught a spoke in his hair.

“Lower your head,” she told him.

“Raise your arm.”

Geneva held the door while they negotiated the umbrella. Adrien followed them upstairs.

At reception, Gabriel gave the appointment name. Isabel kept the bag on her lap when they sat down. Adrien chose a chair across from them rather than the empty place beside her.

A woman came from the corridor carrying a notebook.

“Isabel? Gabriel? I’m Ruth Arden. We spoke briefly through intake yesterday.”

She waited while each answered, then introduced herself to the adults without offering them information about the call.

“We’d like to start alone,” Isabel said.

“Yes. That’s what I have here.”

Ruth opened the meeting-room door. There was a table inside, a jug of water and a window overlooking the street.

Gabriel glanced at Adrien.

“Outside the building. Both of you.”

Adrien stood.

“How will we reach you?” Ruth asked.

“They have my number,” he said.

She turned to Gabriel, who took out his phone.

“We’ll call him.”

Adrien had answered a question that had not required him. He put on his coat and waited for Geneva at the stairs.

Isabel stopped beside the meeting room.

“Don’t talk about us while we’re in there.”

“We won’t,” Geneva said.

They went down separately. At the pavement Geneva turned toward the shops.

“I’ll be that way.”

He nodded. She did not ask him how the drive had gone.

Adrien walked in the other direction until he reached the square. A bus pulled away from the stop, leaving a woman beneath the shelter shaking rain off a folded newspaper. He sat at the far end of the bench and took out his phone.

There were messages he could answer. A supplier wanted confirmation. Someone had sent a photograph of a damaged cabinet hinge. For several minutes he examined the hinge, enlarging the image until the wood grain broke into squares.

He could not remember what he had intended to recommend.

He put the phone down on his knee, screen uppermost.

When Isabel was small, she had once gone into a classroom without turning to see whether he remained outside. He had stood there with her forgotten scarf until a teacher asked if he needed something. He remembered being pleased for her. The discomfort had belonged to him, and he had known what to do with it.

This time there was no achievement to claim in their independence. They needed someone beyond him because he had made himself insufficient.

The woman beside him offered the dry half of her newspaper. He declined, then accepted when she pointed at the wet bench beneath his hand.

“It’s only yesterday’s,” she said.

“Thank you.”

He spread it on the seat and moved onto it. The ordinary kindness unsettled him enough that, when the phone rang, he almost dropped it.

Gabriel wanted him back. Geneva had already been called.

In the meeting room Isabel sat with the files open in front of her. Gabriel had moved his chair away from the table to let Adrien pass, but did not move it back until he had sat down. Geneva took the remaining place.

Ruth waited for Isabel to finish writing something.

“I’ve explained what this preliminary appointment can do,” she said. “I haven’t verified the documents or reached conclusions about the events they describe.”

Gabriel looked at Adrien.

“We’ve asked her to help us check them. She’s going to explain the arrangements directly to us before we agree to further work.”

Adrien nodded.

“If there are costs I can—”

“We’ve asked about that too,” Isabel said.

He stopped.

Ruth rested her pen beside the notebook.

“Payment and access to information will be addressed separately. Today, I need to know whether you’ll provide the material they request without requiring their questions or private conversations to be reported to you.”

“Yes.”

“Copies obtained elsewhere as well,” Gabriel said. “Not just what you give us.”

“Yes.”

Isabel slid a page across the table. It contained three short lines in her handwriting.

“Our names. Our parents. What happened on the trip.”

Below them she had written a fourth: What he decided afterward.

Adrien read it twice.

“I can answer now,” he said.

“I know.” She kept her hand on the page. “We want the records checked first. Then we want you to tell us with someone here who can notice if things don’t match.”

“I understand.”

“And if we ask something before that,” Gabriel said, “you answer it. This isn’t permission to say we’re waiting.”

“No.” Adrien looked between them. “It isn’t.”

Geneva set her bag on the floor.

“The same applies to me.”

Isabel turned to her. “We’ve asked for your account separately.”

“You’ll have it.”

Ruth drew the papers closer only after Isabel released them.

“For today, I’m recording what each of you is agreeing to supply. The next meeting will cover their questions and the specific checks needed. We can arrange that promptly.”

“Tomorrow?” Gabriel asked.

Ruth checked her diary and offered a morning time. Isabel opened her calendar, moved an entry and accepted. Gabriel wrote the time on his own page.

Adrien watched their pens. Nobody looked to him to decide whether the morning was convenient.

“The original waiver stays with us,” Isabel said.

Ruth nodded. “We can discuss copies without taking it from you.”

Gabriel drew the folder toward him. One corner caught beneath the water glass. Adrien moved his hand, then let Gabriel lift the glass himself.

“Can you identify other people who held these records?” Ruth asked Adrien. “People who could be approached independently, subject to the children’s agreement?”

“Yes. Some of the supporting material is held through the solicitor who helped after the trip. I’ll give you the contact details and identify what went through that office.”

“Send them to us too,” Isabel said.

“I will.”

She wrote that down beneath the appointment time.

When the meeting ended, Gabriel put the waiver into his bag. Isabel collected the remaining files. Adrien held the door, then followed them downstairs without reaching for either load.

Under the awning, Geneva asked whether they wanted her tomorrow. Gabriel said yes. Isabel asked her to arrive separately again.

“I’ll be here,” Geneva said.

They said goodbye on the pavement. At the car Isabel stood beside the front passenger door instead of the rear one.

Adrien unlocked it.

“Home?” he asked.

“The library first,” Gabriel said. “I’ll see if Tessa’s there. We can sort out the box.”

Isabel buckled her seat belt and laid the appointment page across her knees.

“Then home. I need the table.”

“For the files?”

She nodded.

Adrien started the engine. The road to the library was familiar. This time he waited until they had both settled before pulling out.