“He’s the boy in the bus-station photograph.”
Chapter 9: The Boy Without a Face
I stared at Elliot’s photograph until the lines of his face began to blur.
“You said the bus-station boy was your grandson?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did Mom take him there?”
Florence took a shaky breath.
She said that Malcolm Pike had employed boys from Hope House at his furniture warehouse.
Several were not old enough to work legally, and the charity’s director had disguised their hours as volunteer service.
Elliot had been fourteen when he told Ruth that children were being paid in cash to keep the operation quiet.
Our mother had tried to document the work records.
She discovered wages diverted through a bank account bearing her forged signature.
“She was gathering proof,” Florence said.
“Then why disappear?”
“Because someone told her Elliot was going to be sent away.”
Elliot had been in foster care under an arrangement connected to the charity.
Ruth feared the paperwork would be altered if she challenged the director openly.
She took him to a bus station, where an attorney was supposed to meet them.
The attorney never arrived.
Instead, Malcolm’s assistant appeared and drove Ruth away.
Elliot hid behind a vending machine until the bus station manager found him.
Florence later brought him home under an emergency placement.
“What happened to Mom?”
“I don’t know what happened after she got into that car.”
I had imagined thousands of answers to that question.
Hearing a simple admission still made my chest tighten.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Florence wiped her eyes.
“Your father asked me not to contact you.”
“Why?”
“He said Ruth’s disappearance was being used to threaten the children.”
I wanted to reject that explanation.
Yet my father had changed after our mother vanished.
He checked the locks every evening and never allowed us to answer the door after dark.
I had mistaken those habits for grief.
Perhaps they had been fear.
Chapter 10: An Empty Place at the Table
I called Naomi after Florence left.
She asked that Florence preserve every document she still possessed and avoid speaking to Adrian alone.
She also advised me not to confront the suspected workers.
“Your mother’s disappearance may involve conduct older than most available records,” she said.
“We need to separate the provable events from the stories people remember.”
I understood, but my patience wore thin.
That evening Hazel asked whether she should stay with her mother for a few nights.
I told her the decision was hers.
