“It can be,” I answered.
Back in Bellhaven, the empty lot beside the library was being turned into a small public garden.
The city asked local groups to submit ideas for educational signs explaining the history of the river and the neighborhood.
Gloria’s gardening club designed the plant beds.
The historical society offered archival photographs.
I volunteered to help record short oral histories that visitors could hear through an optional public listening station.
Everyone interviewed would decide which parts of their recordings could be played.
That condition was written into the project agreement from the beginning.
The project committee included people who had once shared the accusation against me, but they were willing to follow the same rules as everyone else.
Working beside them did not mean I had forgotten what happened.
It meant that ordinary public life required more than permanently separating people into the innocent and the guilty.
Accountability gave us a basis for participating without pretending the past had been harmless.
During the first planning meeting, a resident proposed a sign warning people about fake audio messages.
Another resident worried the sign might frighten older visitors who relied on phone calls from family.
They argued for twenty minutes.
Then Gloria raised her hand.
“Could the sign tell people what to do instead of just what to fear?” she asked.
The room grew quiet.
“I was frightened by a recording that sounded real,” she continued.
“What I needed was a reminder to call somebody I already knew and wait for an answer.”
No one mocked her.
The committee revised the sign to include practical verification steps and information about where to seek help.
The discussion ended with a decision rather than a spectacle.
I looked across the table at Gloria.
She gave me a small nod.
I returned it.
The most unexpected test of our new project came before the first flower was planted.
A local business offered to sponsor the listening station in exchange for displaying its name beside every recording.
The company had not been involved in the fraud case, and its proposal seemed generous.
But the contract also claimed broad permission to reuse the recordings in future promotional materials.
I objected.
The committee chair, a practical retired engineer named Frank Leland, asked whether I was turning down a useful donation because of what happened to me.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“I’m asking whether the speakers understand all the ways their words could be reused.”
