“I’ll tell him if I can,” she answered.
Walter nodded as though honesty was the best gift she could offer.
Outside, the clouds opened over the empty mill, and sunlight briefly touched the stone on the hill.
Emily looked back at the paper star and understood that her mother had not been visiting a grave.
She had been keeping watch over a question.
Chapter Seven: The Woman at the Records Window
Emily spent the next morning at the county records office with a folder full of names and no appointment.
A receptionist directed her toward a public computer and reminded her that many older emergency records were stored on microfilm.
Emily expected a dramatic discovery hidden behind a single locked door.
Instead, she found mislabeled folders, missing dates, and forms written in three incompatible systems.
The work felt less like solving a mystery than repairing a road one pebble at a time.
A clerk named Denise Harper noticed her frustration.
Denise had short silver hair and a pair of spectacles attached to a chain.
She asked what period Emily was researching.
“The Briar Hollow flood,” Emily answered.
Denise looked down at the paper in Emily’s hand.
“Which part?”
“The children transported out of the shelter.”
The clerk’s expression remained professional, but her fingers stopped moving.
“Those files are complicated.”
“Does complicated mean I can’t see them?”
“It means some are public and others contain private information about children.”
“I don’t want anybody’s private medical records.”
“Then we can start with contracts and meeting minutes.”
Denise led Emily to a desk near the back wall and showed her how to request copies without disclosing other families’ names.
The first contract identified Mercer Roadside Group as the food and logistics supplier.
The second listed Eastward as an emergency reunification contractor under a letter signed by Deputy Administrator Philip Stowe.
His signature appeared twice in the scanned document.
The two signatures were not identical, but their peculiar capital P matched.
Emily asked whether Stowe still worked for the county.
Denise said he retired eight years earlier and now chaired a regional disaster preparedness charity.
“He comes here sometimes,” she added.
“Does he ask about the flood?”
“He asks who else has asked.”
Emily felt the same tightening sensation she had felt when Gideon first opened the blue folder.
She copied the contract numbers and requested the public invoices attached to each one.
The invoices recorded motel stays for nineteen children.
Only fifteen names appeared in the shelter departure log.
A separate note said four additional juveniles were unaccompanied and transferred for protective placement.
