“There was one bus.”
“He said there were two.”
Emily remembered the green lunchbox.
She remembered Peter saying that someone had arrived for him.
She could almost hear the second engine beneath the sound of rain.
“My uncle stopped driving after that winter,” Rosa said.
“He said some of the children who went missing weren’t lost in the water.”
Emily gripped the edge of the freezer door.
“Where is your uncle now?”
“He lives in Toledo.”
“Would he speak to me?”
“Maybe, if you ask without a corporate lawyer beside you.”
Emily turned toward the dining room.
Gideon was waiting by the door, the paper star photograph held against his chest.
The black cars outside suddenly seemed less like a rescue than the opening of a door she had spent twenty years keeping closed.
She walked back to him.
“I’ll listen,” she said.
“But my friend comes with me, and I keep the letter.”
Gideon handed it over immediately.
“That’s exactly what your mother asked us to do.”
Chapter Four: A Room Without Cameras
Julian offered a conference room at the Mercer company’s nearest travel center, but Emily refused.
She had no desire to sit beneath a corporate logo while strangers explained her childhood.
Rosa suggested her apartment above her sister’s bakery, which was two miles from the diner and had a lock Rosa trusted.
Gideon agreed without bargaining.
The cars followed Emily’s battered sedan through the storm, keeping enough distance that their lights did not fill her rearview mirror.
Rosa sat beside Emily with the blue folder in her lap.
Neither woman spoke until they reached the bakery.
“You can turn around,” Rosa said as Emily parked.
“I know.”
“I’m not telling you what to do.”
“Everybody else seems eager to.”
Rosa leaned back and watched the rain slide down the windshield.
“Then we’ll make sure they have to ask.”
The apartment smelled of cinnamon and warm yeast from the bakery below.
Its kitchen table had three mismatched chairs, a chipped ceramic bowl, and enough space for the documents Julian brought.
Emily offered Gideon dry socks from a basket near the dryer.
He accepted them with an embarrassed smile.
Julian declined coffee twice before Rosa poured him a cup anyway.
Emily sat facing the door.
She had learned that habit from her mother, who always chose restaurant booths with a view of the parking lot.
Gideon noticed where she sat but did not mention it.
Instead, he placed the photograph beside Nora’s letter.
“Briar Hollow was a riverside community in western Pennsylvania,” he began.
