On the morning of December 8, Mara arrived with the newspaper folded so the report faced outward. She had telephoned first to ask whether I had seen it. I had not. I cleared the breakfast dishes while she spread the paper across the table, both of us careful not to put it into the damp ring from my cup.
The dated coverage described the previous day's announcement in Las Vegas, Nevada. More than 400 arrests across 14 states on December 7, 1995. I read the passage twice. The scale was larger than anything I had witnessed in my limited sessions, and for a moment I felt the pleasure of belonging, however slightly, to an effort beyond my kitchen.
"There," Mara said. "That's what you've been helping with."
"An effort against telephone fraud. Yes. But I don't know where my work fits in this report."
"You can let yourself be glad."
"I am glad." I sat down. "I don't want to turn glad into knowing something I don't."
She pulled her chair closer, and we read the rest together. The report described arrests, not verdicts in hundreds of completed trials. I kept my finger beside the date so I would not slide from what had been announced yesterday into an imagined final accounting. Public action had happened. It was substantial without needing me to add an ending to every case.
Mara asked whether my caller might be among those arrested. I said he might or might not, and neither possibility gave us knowledge. I had no established identity to compare. A name supplied over the telephone was not enough. She looked back through the coverage as though one more paragraph might settle it.
"What about the one in September?"
"We don't know who that was either. We don't know whether the calls were connected."
She let out a breath. "Every time I think there's an answer, you find another thing we don't know."
"I'm trying not to spend the answer before we have it."
That brought us to the machine without either of us naming it first. Della's offer remained open through December 10. Tomorrow was the day I had been considering for the sale. I could feel the temptation to wait, suddenly dressed in a newspaper's respectable clothes. Surely an announcement this large ought to produce something personal before I gave up my equipment.
Mara asked whether there might be repayment now. I told her no one had promised it to me. Arrest did not establish that my money had been found, that anyone responsible for my particular loss was involved, or that funds would reach my account. I heard how dry the words sounded and wished I had a warmer truthful answer.
"It's still good news," she said.
"It is. People can be stopped from doing harm without my roof being paid for."
We sat quietly with that. Outside, someone was trying to start a car; the engine caught and failed, caught again, then settled. The paper lay open between our elbows. I remembered how eagerly I had once accepted a stranger's description of funds being held for me. I did not want a public arrest count to become a new version of that story.
Mara asked whether I wanted to telephone the official contact. I said I would report anything new that required reporting, but the newspaper did not give me a new fact about my own call. I was not entitled to a private list of people arrested merely because I had volunteered.
She went to the stove and warmed the remaining coffee. "I've checked my figures," she said. "The four hundred is possible. I haven't changed the conditions we discussed."
"No move required?"
"No move. No account access. I'd like to help fix the roof."
I thanked her and said we would confirm everything before the sale. She nodded. Neither of us used her offer to hurry the other. We finished the coffee while talking about an ordinary nuisance at her work, a technician who never returned his paperwork complete.
When Mara left, she asked whether I wanted to keep the newspaper. I did. I folded it with the date visible and put it in a drawer separate from the repair figures. One was a record of public news worth preserving. The others were still the terms of a decision I had to make.