The Memoir Has Three Last Chapters

How it begins

Martha Crane reached the former mayor's death on page two hundred and nineteen.

This was surprising because he had delivered the manuscript himself.

The next chapter described his retirement to a cottage. The chapter after that explained why he had never entered public office. All three were labeled Final.

She telephoned him before correcting the punctuation.

'Which ending do you intend to use?'

'Whichever is true.'

'You're the author.'

'You're the editor.'

He hung up with the satisfaction of a man who had outsourced many difficult decisions and expected the habit to survive retirement.

Martha arranged the chapters on her desk. Each used the same paper, the same typewriter and a different version of an event at the old riverside pavilion. One called it a celebration. One called it a mistake. The third did not mention it.

Simon Bell arrived with the printer's estimate. He had allowed for four corrections per page, which Martha considered optimistic even before the mayor developed multiple futures.

'He sent something else,' Simon said.

He placed a folded sheet beside the manuscript. It was an anonymous fourth ending, posted directly to the print shop.

In this version, the mayor returned every penny.

'Interesting choice of tense,' Martha said.

Simon held the sheet to the window.

'Interesting paper.'

'The same?'

'No. Better. Whoever wrote this pays attention to what survives.'

Outside, the mayor's portrait still smiled from a banner over the square. The council had not removed it because nobody had agreed whose budget removal belonged to.

Martha looked at the four endings. She had spent her career making other people's accounts coherent. This time coherence might be the thing somebody was paying her to avoid.

She picked up her pencil and wrote the first question in the margin: What happened at the pavilion?

Then she copied it four times, giving every version an equal opportunity to answer.