Hazel studied the picture.
“Maybe whoever sent it wanted us to look for a person instead of a place.”
We called Margaret through Naomi’s office.
Margaret answered cautiously and asked several questions about the photograph before agreeing to meet.
She confirmed that the child had been in a family-support program.
She would not share private details without appropriate permission.
I respected her caution even though it delayed us.
When the call ended, Hazel asked why someone would mail a photograph anonymously rather than explain everything.
Florence looked toward the broken star on my shelf.
“People get used to hiding,” she said.
“Sometimes they keep hiding long after the reason is gone.”
Chapter 31: The Boy in the Second Picture
Margaret Dale met us at a public library near Harrisburg.
She brought written permission from the now-grown man in the photograph to share a small part of his history.
His name was Jonah Mercer.
He had known Rebecca Lowell as a volunteer who helped his mother navigate medical and housing paperwork.
His family had no connection to the Hope House warehouse.
Rebecca had stayed with them during a period when she needed a room.
Jonah remembered her teaching him to build birdhouses from scrap wood.
I smiled despite myself.
My mother had taught me the same skill.
Jonah had grown up believing Rebecca was a distant family friend.
When he learned she might be a missing woman named Ruth Bell, he began searching old photographs.
He found the image and contacted Margaret because he did not know whether revealing it would endanger anyone.
Margaret had passed it to a former colleague, who mailed it anonymously.
The chain of delivery was awkward and unnecessary.
It also explained why the note sounded like an appeal rather than a threat.
I asked Jonah what happened to Rebecca.
He said she moved to western Pennsylvania when he was thirteen.
She wrote to his mother for two more years, then the letters stopped.
His mother had died, and he inherited the correspondence.
He brought us those letters.
The last one mentioned a teaching position at a community college and a small town near Lake Erie.
For the first time, our search pointed toward a place that still existed.
Chapter 32: The Town by the Lake
The town was called Fairhaven, though there were a dozen Fairhavens on the map.
This one sat above a gray stretch of Lake Erie and had a community college that closed a satellite campus nine years earlier.
