Lillian described a wooden bench hauled from the floodwater, a little girl who refused to release a yellow mitten, and a ledger that had been removed before city inspectors arrived.
The names of several children appeared in neat columns.
One name had been scratched out so hard that the pencil tore the paper.
At the bottom, Lillian wrote that a child should not disappear merely because adults disagreed about where the child belonged.
Emily stopped reading.
Her grandmother had spent her life telling stories about the river, but she had never mentioned a missing child.
Arthur listened to the silence.
“That,” he said, “is why I came back.”
Chapter 7: The West Room
The ferry station stood at the edge of a redevelopment district surrounded by new apartment buildings and expensive restaurants.
Its windows had been boarded for years.
The Bell Heritage Foundation owned the building through an agreement that required preservation of significant historical features.
The foundation had announced a renovation the previous month.
According to the website, workers would begin removing unsafe interior walls the following Monday.
Emily showed the announcement to Arthur.
He asked her to read the project description twice.
“West storage room,” he repeated.
“That is what they are calling it.”
“That room held the register.”
“What register?”
Arthur hesitated.
“The emergency list from the flood.”
Emily called Simon and asked whether the work could be delayed.
Simon said an emergency preservation request might be possible if they could establish that the west room contained records.
They needed evidence stronger than a family drawing.
Emily looked at the old key.
She wanted to walk directly to the station and open the door.
Simon refused to authorize entry without permission because the building was unsafe and the ownership situation was disputed.
They agreed to inspect surviving plans first.
At the city archives, a clerk named Anita Torres brought out a map so brittle that the paper edges cracked beneath the protective sleeve.
The west room was marked as an equipment closet on the latest plan.
An earlier drawing labeled it the public registry.
The labels had changed in 1981.
Anita noticed a correction in the margin.
A name had been crossed out and replaced with the initials of Arthur’s longtime business partner, Raymond Sloane.
Arthur inhaled sharply when Emily spoke the name.
“Raymond chaired the flood relief committee.”
“Is he still alive?”
“He died last winter.”
“Then who controls his records?”
Arthur’s mouth hardened.
“His granddaughter controls the foundation’s archive committee.”
