The shape matched the steel box Colin remembered.
I could not say whether the box had been removed recently or before Elise died.
We made a list of documents that might have been stored there.
Property deeds, old insurance papers, a few photographs and Elise’s records of home repairs.
Then Colin found an envelope tucked into a harmless folder of garden receipts.
It contained a carbon copy of a letter Elise had written to the Sterling cleanup administrator twelve years earlier.
The letter asked whether the survey marker on our wall needed to remain accessible for future monitoring.
It also described a man who requested entry to our garden without written authorization.
Elise had noted his business card number and the company name.
Finch Environmental Strategies.
The discovery unsettled me more than the missing album.
I had lived beside Elise for years without knowing she had written that letter.
Hannah read it slowly.
“Mom was trying to do the right thing,” she said.
“As usual.”
The letter did not accuse Finch of wrongdoing.
It asked a question and requested a written answer.
Attached was a reply acknowledging that the marker should remain visible and that private entry required permission.
The response came from an engineering office that no longer existed.
But it confirmed the wall’s historical role.
I gave copies to Tran through the proper process.
She asked whether Elise had ever complained of being threatened.
“Not to me,” I said.
“Then don’t assume she was.”
I appreciated the reminder.
I was already tempted to imagine that my wife had been carrying a secret conflict while I was too busy to notice.
The simpler truth was that she had handled a routine property question responsibly and saved the paperwork.
That was enough.
Colin found the steel box in an unexpected place that evening.
It sat behind a stack of empty paint cans in the garage, where I had moved it myself during renovations three years earlier.
I remembered only after seeing the dent on its lid.
The box held old mortgage statements, warranties and photographs, but not the missing album.
For a moment I was embarrassed by my certainty that it had been stolen.
Then I was relieved.
The incident reminded me how easily fear could turn an uncertain memory into a confident accusation.
We corrected the timeline and told Tran about the box.
She thanked us for the update.
The missing album remained a real concern.
