He looked back at her. He did not say anything for a moment. Then he looked down at the old card again and held it up next to her face, at arm's length, the way she had seen people hold a paint chip up against a wall. She knew what he was seeing. In the picture, her hair was long and blonde and blown out, curled at the ends with a round brush, the way Colt liked it, and her face was fuller, and she was wearing makeup, foundation and blush and mascara and a pale pink lipstick that she had worn for years because he'd said once that red made her look cheap. In the picture she was smiling. She remembered the BMV clerk up north saying Smile, hon, it's gonna be on there for four years, and remembered smiling, and remembered thinking about the bruise on her upper arm under her cardigan and whether the clerk could see it through the sleeve. The woman in that picture looked like a dental receptionist who taught Sunday school and made a famous seven-layer dip. Which was what she had been.
The woman standing in front of the police officer had cropped dark hair and no makeup and a sunburned nose and a Goodwill hoodie, and smelled like an industrial dryer, and had lost twenty-two pounds.
"Doesn't look much like you," he said.
"It's me."
"Issued 2022. That's not that long ago."
"It's been a long four years."
He did not smile. He turned the card over in his fingers, saw the punched hole, turned it back. "Where do you live, Ms. Garvey?"
"The address is on the temporary."
He unfolded the paper and looked at it again, and she watched his mustache move as his mouth tightened under it.
"This is a P.O. box," he said. "In Columbus."