Three workers ran the office, but the roster listed four. The unfamiliar name appeared only on Sundays. When the harbor archive requested staff histories, Ellis asked retired employees who the fourth person had been.
They remembered a boy who carried tea and swept the steps while his grandmother worked. He was never employed there. She put his name on a spare roster to make him feel included, then kept the sheet when he grew too old to come along.
A later annotation marked the date of his death. Ellis realized that the sheet was not an official staffing record at all, although it had been stored among them. The grandmother had preserved a private memory in the format she used every week at work.
He moved the sheet into a clearly described personal collection, retaining its connection to the office files. The three actual workers kept their place in the employment history. The fourth name was not deleted; it acquired a different explanation, one that allowed a small boy to remain on his grandmother's Sunday list without becoming an employee he had never been.