Chapter Eight: A Mother Who Would Not Sign
Danny arrived that afternoon with two plastic storage bins strapped into the back of his work van.
He hugged Emily so tightly she felt the seam of his jacket against her cheek.
“I came as soon as my supervisor let me go,” he said.
“You should have slept first.”
“You sound exactly like Mom.”
Inside, Rosa cleared the bakery table, and the siblings began sorting through Nora’s belongings.
They found hospital badges, old bus tickets, grocery lists, and children’s drawings folded into envelopes.
There were four letters addressed to Peter Vale.
Each ended before Nora could explain why he had disappeared.
There were three addressed to a girl named Anna.
One contained an apology for failing to keep a promise.
Emily read it aloud because Danny asked her to.
“I told you I would know where they took you, and I was wrong.”
The line was followed by a date six weeks after the flood.
Danny rubbed his forehead.
“She tried to find them after we moved.”
“She never stopped.”
The green box with the broken latch appeared at the bottom of the second bin.
Inside was a small notebook wrapped in wax paper.
Its cover bore Nora’s initials and the name of the shelter in faded pencil.
Emily recognized her mother’s habit of recording facts on whatever paper was available.
The first pages listed food supplies, medical requests, and shifts worked by volunteers.
Halfway through, the entries became names followed by questions.
Why were the children taken after dark?
Why was the south entrance locked from outside?
Who told the guards not to speak to parents?
Why did the driver refuse to write his own name?
Near the back, Nora had copied a phrase she overheard in the transport office.
“Placement first, explanation later.”
Emily read those words without speaking.
Danny pulled another paper from the box.
It was a refusal form bearing Nora’s signature beside the statement that Emily Carter would remain in her mother’s custody.
A second signature belonged to someone called L. Sloane.
The line for supervisory approval had been left blank.
“Who would ask her to sign something like that?” Danny said.
Emily examined the form.
It identified Eastward Child Services as the agency overseeing temporary relocation.
A pencil mark crossed the space marked guardian consent.
“They tried to move me too,” she said.
Danny sat down hard.
He had grown up believing the flood was a bad memory their mother wished to forget.
Now he faced the possibility that their family had survived a threat he never knew existed.
