“You’ve got my vote,” Vera told him. “I’m sure everyone knows that you’re doing your very best.”
The couple finished up their meal, both of them hurrying to get to their respective offices. Vera waved to Orville as he walked toward the police station, putting on a happier expression than what she felt inside.
As she told Orville over breakfast, Vera had promised to help the town hall workers verify voter registrations. It was a dull task that no one looked forward to, so Vera was the only volunteer who arrived at the building later that day.
“Oh, hullo, Miss Vixen,” said one of the several rabbits who worked there. “Come with me and I’ll show you what needs to be done. We’re a bit behind, since the key to the storeroom got lost after the last big election and no one realized until a couple weeks ago. We had to locate a spare, and until the room got opened yesterday, no one’s been able to do a thing.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” Vera said, wondering just how monumental the task would be.
“Don’t worry, it’s really not so bad. The goal is to keep the voter rolls updated so that we don’t accidentally disenfranchise someone. Usually, the discrepancies occur because a creature moved residences, or was underage last election but is now of age—but forgot to submit the form to let us know. And deaths are the other thing. All removals due to a death must be verified with an official notice on the approved list. There’s forms for everything, though. Just follow the directions and you’ll do fine.”
The rabbit led Vera down to the room, which looked like it hadn’t been entered for the last several elections. The dust lay thick along the tops of the oak filing cabinets. A few hanging lamps illuminated the space with a warm glow, and the chair at the worktable was padded in plush green velvet.
The rabbit hurried around, pulling piles of index cards and stacked ledgers from various spots, placing them on the table. She quickly went through the instructions, and told Vera to call for her if she had questions.
“But it’s not difficult, just a bit tedious, dear. We thank you for your time—honestly, we’re stretched pretty thin at the moment. This election is the biggest in years!”
Then the rabbit left, keeping the door propped open to the hallway. For the next few hours, Vera sat alone at the big table in the cool, faintly musty room, going through a pile of forms, and stacks and stacks of cards.
She’d brought along a thermos of coffee, and sipped from the mug every so often to keep her focus. This certainly was detail work. It seemed inefficient to have to check and record all the information on a resident to ensure they didn’t accidentally get let off the rolls. But Vera knew that was the price one paid for living in a civilized, free society.
Imagine a world where some voices were silenced, she thought. The woodland was a symphony of sounds—perhaps not all to one’s liking, but part of the fabric of the forest world. To the creatures in Shady Hollow, silence meant danger.
That thought brought her right back to the case, even though she told Orville that she’d lay off it for a while. The niggling details just wouldn’t let her alone. She’d been so certain that Thomas was part of the answer. He’d been disowned by the family. Edward wouldn’t talk about him. He crossed paths with criminals. He was like a ghost—physically gone but still haunting everyone.
“There’s one extra rat,” she muttered, leaning back in her chair. “One alive in the house, who we all call Edward. The one buried in Highbank, who we all call Thomas. And one unearthed in the woods, who no one can name….”
She frowned. It all came back to that strange fact: the body in the woods had not just been killed, but rendered unrecognizable. Why? Why, why, why?
“Rage? Hate? Or part of a plan?” Vera asked herself for the dozenth time. She shook her head. Without more information, she had no path forward.
“Ugh, Orville was right. We might be better off if that body had never been found.”
Sighing, Vera kept at the task in front of her, working patiently, appreciating how her “done” stack grew over the hours. The issues she had to deal with were simply the mundane events of life that could confuse recordkeepers. Folk grew up, they got married, they moved, they died. It all had to be accounted for.
After sipping a bit more coffee, she reached for the next batch of cards. They were bundled and tied up with twine, along with a paper tag saying ML-Ward 4. She untied the twine carefully, since these registration cards were already getting brittle and yellow with age.
She flipped through them, and a name jumped out:
Springfield.
Eager to see if the voting records revealed anything new about the family she’d been researching, she read through the names and found several branches of the Springfield family tree, generations of dutiful citizens who cast their ballots every spring and fall as needed.
Then she got to Springfield, Adora. Well, that made sense, since her death was a recent event. Vera filled out the form for Adora, listing DEATH as the reason for removal.
“‘Supply official notice and confirm identity with supporting document,’” she read out loud. “Ok, I’ve got a copy of the obituary here.” She pinned the clipping to the form, pleased that her earlier work at the newspaper was helping again here at the town hall. “Supporting document. Hmm.” That meant she had to show that there wasn’t another Adora Springfield who might be confused with this one, and thus unfairly removed from the rolls. Which seemed a little
