Seven Years After My Daughter’s Funeral, I Followed Her Husband to a Rehabilitation Center—And Saw a Woman I Thought Was Dead

The first had cost us seven years.

We made copies.

Twenty-seven pages.

The clerk charged four dollars and five cents.

I counted the coins and handed them over.

The fee seemed absurdly small.

Seven years of my daughter’s life had been obscured by a trail of missing and mismatched records.

Now I was carrying the available papers in a white envelope that cost less than lunch.