Dov had kept records for thirty-one families. Sable's was the longest: eighteen years, eleven notebooks, 4,200 entries.
She had been assigned by the agency when Sable was three days old. The contract was standard: two years of observation, with a written summary at the end. At the two-year mark she had requested an extension. Then another. The family had a talent for forgetting to close the arrangement, and Dov had a talent for not reminding them.
Sable is 29 now, sitting across the desk from her, looking at the stack of notebooks. Eight are blue and three are green, a product of a supply disruption in the fifth year that Dov never corrected.
"My mother said you were precise, " Sable says.
Dov moves the top notebook half an inch to the left. "I prefer accurate."
"What's the difference?"
"Precise means I didn't miss anything. Accurate means what I recorded was true."
She has reviewed the notebooks three times in the past week. She knows the pattern. It is not what she expected when she found it, in the seventh year of the records: Sable's word appeared most often in the presence of Sable's sister, who died when Sable was eleven. Not only then. But most often. And in the months after: not at all, for a long time, and then again, changed.
She has not decided whether to say this.
"You can read them here, if you want, " Dov says. "Or take them."
Sable picks up the top notebook, opens to the first page, and reads for a while without saying anything.
The other ten sit on the desk between them.