She did confirm that a boy admitted as Daniel Price in two thousand six had left the program before his eighteenth birthday.
His file contained a handwritten objection to the name assigned at intake.
Emily read that sentence with her finger pressed against the screen.
Walter asked to see it three times.
It was not proof that the boy was Peter, but it was a reason for him to hope.
Tessa prepared a formal request supported by Walter’s family records and the original transfer documents.
The archivist agreed to forward a sealed letter to the former resident if a current address could be located through the program’s lawful contact process.
Nobody promised that he would answer.
Emily helped Walter write the letter without telling him what he should feel.
He described his sister, Peter’s favorite books, and the green lunchbox with Saturn on the lid.
He did not begin by accusing anybody of stealing Peter.
He began with a memory of Peter standing in the school boiler room, asking whether steam could push a rocket to the moon.
Then he wrote that Peter could reply, decline, or take all the time he needed.
They mailed it on a Tuesday morning.
The same afternoon, a local television station reported that the founder of Mercer Roadside Group was under scrutiny for a decades-old emergency transport contract.
The report included an image of Emily leaving the records office.
She had not given an interview.
The camera angle suggested someone had photographed her from the street.
By evening, strangers were calling Rosa’s bakery and asking whether Emily was seeking a settlement.
One caller offered money for the contents of Nora’s notebook.
Another claimed to be a distant relative of Peter Vale and demanded immediate access to the family’s documents.
Walter disconnected his phone after a reporter asked whether he hoped to become rich.
Emily felt a rush of anger at the way twenty years of grief could be reduced to a question about money.
She contacted the station and requested a correction to the suggestion that Mercer had hired her.
The producer asked whether she would appear on camera to tell her side.
“Not while people who were children during the flood can be identified without consent,” she said.
The producer promised to review the footage.
The next day, Emily received a voicemail from Victor Hale.
He sounded less confident than he had at the diner.
“I didn’t know you were involved in all this,” he said.
“I’m hearing your name everywhere, and I think we should discuss what happened at work.”
