Benjamin had brought one notebook to the meeting.
He opened it to a list of children’s names that Teresa copied during the flood.
The list contained two names missing from the official registry.
One was Caroline.
The other was a boy named Michael Fenwick.
Emily realized that Lillian had not been the only person attempting to preserve a complete list.
Chapter 24: Teresa’s Pencil Marks
Teresa Ortiz had written her notes in the margins of a school arithmetic workbook.
The first pages contained multiplication exercises and a drawing of a cat.
Later pages described food deliveries, shelter assignments, and the people who arrived asking for information.
Teresa had used a small star beside each child’s name when she personally saw that child leave with a relative.
Caroline’s name had no star.
Michael Fenwick’s name had two question marks and a date.
Emily asked Benjamin whether he remembered Michael.
He recalled a boy who wore a knitted cap even indoors and carried a small wooden boat.
Teresa’s notebook said Michael had been placed on the same white bus that carried Caroline to Meadowbrook.
A note written several weeks later stated that Michael’s uncle had been told the boy was not in Rhode Island.
Benjamin explained that Teresa distrusted that answer because she had personally watched Michael board the bus.
Dr. Cho compared the notebook entries against the vehicle records and found that the dates aligned.
The new evidence increased confidence in the timeline but did not identify who had given false information to Michael’s uncle.
Arthur asked whether the family could be located.
Simon advised a careful search that avoided unnecessary publicity.
Emily offered to help with public records as part of her supervised project work.
She was not yet an employee of the archive, so Dr. Cho arranged a volunteer agreement with limits on confidential material.
Emily appreciated the boundaries.
She had seen too many powerful people treat familiarity as permission.
They found that Michael’s uncle had died in 1996 after working most of his life as a dockworker.
A newspaper clipping suggested that he continued to place missing-person inquiries for several years.
Emily read the dates and felt the scale of his effort.
He had searched through seasons, jobs, and changes in local government while the records sat behind a wall.
At the end of her shift, Emily called Benjamin to thank him for sharing Teresa’s notebook.
Benjamin said his sister would have been pleased that somebody finally read it.
