The obituary listed a surviving son, Benjamin, and several grandchildren.
That meant he had eventually rejoined at least part of his family.
It also meant the story in Arthur’s memory could end differently from the one he feared.
Simon contacted Benjamin through the obituary’s funeral home records only after consulting privacy guidance.
Benjamin, now in his fifties, agreed to speak with a researcher.
He wanted the conversation recorded because his own memories of the flood were incomplete.
Emily prepared questions that invited him to tell his story rather than forcing it into the registry’s categories.
Arthur asked to attend only if Benjamin wished it.
The man who had once been carried upstairs in a laundry basket said he wanted Arthur there.
Chapter 23: The Man from the Laundry Basket
Benjamin Ortiz arrived wearing a green work jacket with a union patch on its sleeve.
He was a municipal bus mechanic who had spent twenty-nine years keeping other people moving.
He shook Emily’s hand and then walked directly to Arthur.
“I don’t remember your face,” Benjamin said.
Arthur smiled.
“That makes two of us.”
Benjamin laughed, and the room relaxed.
He remembered Lillian’s singing and the smell of wet wool in the ferry station.
He remembered being carried upstairs because his shoes had been lost in the floodwater.
He did not remember the laundry basket.
Teresa had told him about it repeatedly as they grew older.
Emily asked when the siblings had reunited.
Benjamin said Teresa found him two weeks after the river fell.
She had visited every shelter she could reach by bus until a volunteer recognized his description.
Their mother had been hospitalized after a fall and could not search herself.
Teresa arranged for a relative to collect him, but the official records were never corrected.
Benjamin brought a family photograph taken the following Christmas.
It showed Elena sitting between her children with her arms around both of them.
Arthur ran his fingertips across the edge of the photograph’s protective sleeve.
He asked Emily to describe it.
Emily described the crooked tree, Teresa’s bright sweater, and Benjamin’s expression as he held a toy truck.
Arthur turned toward Benjamin.
“I am glad you went home.”
Benjamin looked at him for a moment.
“I am too, but my sister never forgot the children who didn’t.”
He explained that Teresa had volunteered for years at emergency shelters because she understood what it meant to be separated by a form.
She had died recently, leaving a small collection of notebooks.
