A Beautiful New Life (16 page)

“He said to just say good morning.” Louise pulled her chair out and sat down.

“Are you okay this morning?” Edith was so sweet always worried about how she was doing. She now wondered what her story was. Was she someone she could trust? Jordan said to trust no one.

“I’m fine. I think I’m coming down with something.” She smiled at her.

“Okay then, just don’t give what you got to me.” She laughed and walked to her desk.

Louise went to work scanning the documents as she had for months. It was a slow process and as she worked on scanning the old
documents,
she realized that maybe most of her answers were right here in front of her. Maybe the Office of Vital Statistics will be more vital to her quest than anyone would imagine. She pulled a few random files she had already scanned. She checked birth dates against residency dates. None of them matched. As far as she could
see,
none of the adult residents
was
born here.
Some
children were
born there,
but none is
old enough to leave.
She thought of her friend, Gwen, w
ould they allow her to leave if she wanted to?

She searched by date of residency and of the ones she had already scanned in none dated back more than seven years. Of
course,
she was only a third of the way through
the files
. She needed to see her file but she was far from the letter S and was afraid they would be suspicious if she jumped ahead. She was on G and wondered if they had a file under her real name.

She pulled open the drawer.
Let’s
see
Ga
,
Ge
, here we go
Gi
; Gifford, Gilab.
Edith walked in as she grabbed the file
and h
er heart sta
rted racing
.

“Hey Megan did you eat yet? I feel like going out. Do you want…are you okay?”

Louise was shaking.
Think of a reason.

“Are you okay
?
” Edith asked again.

“No…no I mean I haven’t eaten.” She took a deep breath, “but I think I need to. Whew I feel a little dizzy.” She slipped the file back into its spot and closed the drawer.

“I’m glad you came in I would’ve worked straight through lunch again.”

“So do you want to go with me?”

“Yes, that’d be great. I need a break.” She laughed.

After
lunch,
Louise did not dare look at her file. That was a
close call
and she was lucky she had an excuse to cover her anxiety. She needed to prepare herself for what could be in that file. She worked on the G’s the rest of the day but never made it to her file. When the day finally
ended,
she left work and went straight home.

What could they possibly have in that file?
She thought.
She has already seen numerous files but until now did not realize what important information they may contain. She could not let what she see affect her. She needed to keep her cover. The doorbell rang and Louise got up to answer it.

“Hey Jordan.
I didn’t expect to see you today.” She opened the door wider.

“
Wow, Jordan
?
I
haven’t
been called that in a long time. It sounds strange.
I had to see how
you’re
doing today after the news yesterday. Are you okay?” He stepped into the living room. The comfortable warm feeling her home always welcomed him with was now gone.

“
I need to move on from my life as Megan with Michael.
So
,
if it’s okay, I’ll call you Jordan and p
lease call me Louise. It’ll just make things easier for me.” She waved him to take a seat on the couch.

“Okay…Louise.” His hesitation showed. He had fallen for Megan and to him that was who she was.

“But to answer your question, yes I’m trying to come to terms with all this and find a way to get the hell out of here.” She sat across the room from him now and the pain in his eyes showed. He knew what he did was the right thing but it hurt to know what he lost because of it.

“Any luck with that?”

“Yes…well…well maybe.” Louise explained about the files she worked with
. H
ow they had to contain the information she needed to find her way out of here.

“Did you have a chance to look at your file?”

“No, but they have a file under both of my names I’m sure, I only caught a glimpse of the one in my real name.”

“A glimpse?”

“Yes,
Edith walked in
as I pulled it out of the drawer. I started to shake afraid I’d gotten caught.”

“Well that’s because you are
pretending to only be Megan now.
You have to accept that and act natural.
You’re
scanning the files right?
So
you have a right to access them. I’m not going to tell you that there aren’t people here who know who you really are; but for the most part the majority of the people don’t even know who they are let alone care who you are or what file you’re looking at
while doing your job
.”

“You’re right. I need to stop acting guilty. I can do this.” This was one of those moments she would reward him with a kiss or hug and had to fight to contain herself. “What do you think I should be looking for?”

“I don’t know. We both know we had previous lives; why not check our files and see what similarities there are.”

“Yes that would be a good start.” They talked a little more and Jordan left. Louise made herself some dinner, set her clothes out for work the next morning, showered, and went to bed.

Th
e next morning
found Louise at work
scanning the files once more. Louise Gilab’s folder was among the stack she would be working on. As soon as she scanned it in, she entered the data fields as required. She pulled up her file and searched for Michael Dawson. If Jordan
had a file under his new
name,
Louise would have scanned it
already weeks ago. The first thing she noticed was there was no picture of her attached to the file but there was on the Michael Dawson file. She also noticed that her file had a date of death. She pulled the hard copy of her file again and skimmed through the pages.

“What are you doing? You
shouldn’t
be loo
king at those. Just scan them
.” Edith was moody today and Louise took it in stride.

“I was auditing to make sure all the pages scanned. I actually caught one by chance where some of the pages were upside down so they scanned in blank. I audit one in every ten or so files, the rest I just fan through the pages and make sure they were all in the right order.”

“That’s very smart, I would never have thought of that. See
that’s
why you’re so great at this. Well keep at it.” Louise found that as long as you had an answer
,
Edith was happy.

“Did you need something else? You came in…”

“Oh my y
es, I wanted to let you know that
Mayor
Kramer
will be dropping by today so I need you to clean up your area.”

“What are these? They were here when I got here.” She pointed to the stacks of files all over the desk and floor.

“Well since we were going paperless
, I guess no one felt the
new folders
needed
filed. I guess they hoped the system would be up and running by now.”

“So can I just scan these in now and get them put away.” Her heart skipped a beat as she hoped that maybe Megan’s file would be among them.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Well I’ll straighten these up and get scanning.”

Edith left and Louise quickly went through the pile of folders. She sorted them alphabetically and stacked them in neat piles on her desk. She was working on the last pile when she came across Megan Strauss’ folder. She took a deep breath and calmed her rattling nerves.

Must stay calm, she thought.
She went to the scanner and scanned it in
the document
. As she had thought earlier Megan’s file had a picture of her. Her birthdate was off by one month, one day, and one year.
How creative, Louise thought.
Megan’s date of residency was the same as the date of Louise’s death. The record number was the same on both. As standard
practice,
Louise knew this field would be a unique identifying number. She pulled up Michael’s file and found he had a different number.

Hmmm…I need another file
.
She thought for a minute,
Vince
.  She searched by Vince and found a Vince Franklin.
The picture confirmed it was the same man.
He had a different record number and it was then she noticed the sub classification code or lack of
a code
. He did not have one. She pulled up her files and noticed the sub class on Megan’s file was LG and the sub class on Louise’s was MS. It was for
cross-referencing
the real name and the given name. This numbering was all making sense now. So why
didn’t
Vince have a sub class. A sickening feeling came over Louise. Louise knew it would take her months to get the rest scanned in and she just did not have months. She had to get them done now.

Chapter
Fifteen

She worked on getting the documents scanned and only entered their names in the computer. This sped up the process and within a
month,
she had all the files scanned. Now that
she had scanned all the files,
she felt more comfortable pulling
the ones
she needed to look at
closer
. She felt confident
that Mary would accept her explanation if she
questioned her. She began confirming her suspicions. She started with
M
ayor
Kramer
whom she had met a few weeks ago. She pulled up his file and sure
enough,
he did not have the sub classification that most of the others had. She checked a few more and found that the doctor, Mark at the dorm, and Edith, her supervisor also lacked the sub classification. She checked one more, Betty, the motherly nurse she had become close to as Megan. To her
surprise,
she did have one.
She was sure she was one of these people who founded Genesee or determined wanted to be there willingly.
She searched by record number to find her matching file. The search resulted in
four
records.

From her initial
review,
Betty and her husband were there together but forced to take on separate lives. She was not familiar with who her real husband was and upon closer review found the answer.
Stevie, her real husband,
had passed away years ago. She reviewed a few more names
, picked at random
. Of th
o
se names she did not really know them other than from time to
time,
she would pass them on the street. Now that she thinks about
it,
she was always seeing at least one of them every day.

This was good information to have if she was planning an escape. She needed to work on getting copies of all of these. She still needed to find out how she got here.
Why her?
She thought back to her life with Arlin and the kids. Everything seemed normal and she does not recall anyone or thing being suspicious or out of place. If
someone
had followed
her
for a
time,
she would hope she would have noticed.
Of course, though,
she was so busy with work and the kids. Arlin was always away busy at work site after work site. Did this have something to do with him? Did one of his jobs go bad
?
W
as
she
the collateral damage?
T
hat did not
make sense
to her. One thing she knew for sure about Arlin, he was an honest man when it came to business.

With the files
completed,
she was worried that they would let her go and she may never have a chance to get copies or search for more information that would answer her questions. Her worries were so
on resolved when Edith walked over to her desk
.

“Well good news Megan, we found some more work for you to do.” She walked up to her carrying a stack of folders. This time they were an olive green folder with confidential stamped in big black letters across the front. Edith explained that these were the financial records of the city and
she needed to handle them
discreetly.