No one was injured, and the building was listed as vacant.
The inspector’s photographs showed the hallway before the repairs.
In one photograph, a child-sized chalkboard leaned against the wall.
Its writing was too blurred to read.
Emily asked for a copy of the image.
She did not expect the picture to solve anything by itself.
She wanted to build a sequence of things that could be checked without relying only on memory.
That evening, Gideon called to say he had located the woman named L. Sloane.
She had worked for Eastward and now lived in Vermont under her married name.
“She won’t speak to me,” Gideon said.
“Did you tell her why you were calling?”
“I told her I wanted to understand the transports.”
“Maybe she thought you already knew.”
Gideon exhaled slowly.
“Perhaps she was right to think that.”
Emily looked again at the note in her mother’s notebook.
The road to Mercer Hill had led to a building that stirred memories but provided no answer about Peter.
The next question was not where the children had been held.
It was who had decided they could be moved, and why so much effort had gone into keeping the decision hidden.
Chapter Ten: The Woman Called Sloane
Lena Sloane answered Emily’s letter four days after it arrived.
She did not call the Mercer office or send a message through Julian.
She wrote a single sentence on the back of a postcard from Vermont.
“Meet me where the town keeps the names, and bring nobody who can sign a check.”
Emily recognized the reference immediately.
The town kept the names at the Briar Hollow memorial room, a small museum established in the old school library.
Rosa agreed to come, but stayed on the opposite side of the room when Lena arrived.
Lena was nearly seventy, thin and stooped, with silver hair cut close around her ears.
She carried a grocery bag instead of a briefcase.
For several minutes she read the plaques on the wall without acknowledging Emily.
Finally she stopped before a photograph of schoolchildren gathered around a mural.
“Your mother was taller than I remembered,” she said.
Emily stood beside her.
“You knew her.”
“I owed her an answer.”
“You still do.”
Lena placed the grocery bag on a bench.
“I was a temporary administrator for Eastward.”
“Were you the person who asked my mother to sign away custody of me?”
Lena flinched.
“I carried the form.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I was the person who handed it to her.”
