Here is what I actually had, in the October, about a transaction from 2008: nothing.

Not a file.

Not a folder.

My parents’ papers were in a closet in a house I could not enter.

And even those, I found out later, did not contain it.

Banks in this country do not keep records forever.

The general retention requirement is five years, and most institutions hold seven, and some hold ten for certain categories, and after that the records are gone and not in a vault somewhere and not recoverable by subpoena, because they do not exist.

2008 was seventeen years ago.