Noah threaded the grey plastic reel of microfiche film through the glass rollers of the reader. His hands were steady, but he rubbed his temples with both thumbs when the film caught on the edge of the metal lens holder. The green light of the screen illuminated his face, casting deep shadows under his eyes.
“Try October of nineteen ninety-eight,” I said, leaning over his shoulder.
The plastic dial clicked under his fingers. The scanned pages of the Greenfield Daily Reporter flicked past, a blur of forgotten high-school football scores, dry-cleaning advertisements, and estate sales. He slowed the reel as the dates at the top of the pages crawled toward the middle of the month.
“There,” Noah said, his voice flat.
The screen settled on the front page of the October seventeenth edition. In the bottom right corner, beneath a grainy photograph of a dark sedan with its front bumper crushed against a concrete bridge support, was a short column. The headline was small, almost lost between an ad for a hardware store and the local weather forecast.
