Six weeks.
She reads the Betts entry from the beginning before she writes the closing date. She has not done this with any of the others — the other entries were shorter, simpler, things she could hold in her head. This one she needs to read.
The receipts. The dates. The first call from Jerome about a man with a housing problem and a box of documents. The session at the kitchen table — the pile of papers, the way Mr. Betts organized them by date even though no one had asked him to, the way he said I just need someone to see what happened. The documented amounts: $6,200 over eight months. The receipts that matched. The receipts that didn't match for reasons she could not determine. Mrs. Calloway's account. Jerome's account. The referral chain that had moved faster than the original entry.
The three calls to the landlord's office. The first with a message. The second and third without. No response.
Under Limits of Witness she writes: landlord account unavailable. Three contact attempts. No response. This is not a finding against the landlord. It is a record of what was reachable.
She dates the entry. She signs it. She puts it in the binder.
The Register now has one closed entry and one open one. She opens the Owens file and writes: active. Then she looks at the two entries side by side for a moment — the thick closed Betts entry and the thin open Owens one — and thinks about how the Register will look in a year if the referral chain keeps moving. How many entries. How many signatures. How many Limits of Witness sections.
Mr. Betts called last week to ask if there was anything more she could do. She had told him: the entry is complete. He had been quiet for a moment. Then: what does that mean for me?
She had said: it means what happened is witnessed. It means someone else will be able to read this and know what occurred, to the extent I could determine it. What you do with that — whether you pursue a formal complaint, whether you find another avenue — that is outside the Register.
He had said: but you believe me.
She had thought about that carefully before she answered. She had said: I believe the documents. I believe the accounts I collected. I don't have a way to assess truth outside of what I can witness. What I can tell you is that nothing in what you showed me contradicted itself.
The line had been quiet. Then: that will have to be enough.
She had not known what to say to that. She had said: I think it might be more than you know yet.
She closes the binder. She does not know if that is true. She had needed to say something and that was the most honest thing she had.