The document showed a transport company collected three children on the morning after the last recorded disappearance.
Its destination was a rural property leased by the charitable trust.
The transport invoice had been signed by Beatrice Venn.
An attorney’s initials appeared beside an amendment authorizing emergency placement.
The initials matched Richard’s, but Naomi said the document still required authentication.
The next development came from a man named Samuel Reid.
He had been fourteen when he left Alder House and had spent the intervening years believing his younger brother abandoned him.
He contacted Lillian after reading a notice asking former staff and residents to share information with investigators.
Samuel arrived with a shoebox of postcards he had never sent.
Each card was addressed to his brother Owen.
Samuel had written them during his first year in foster care but never learned where to mail them.
His hands shook as he showed us the dates.
He said Owen had slept in the room beside Tessa’s and vanished the same night.
“I thought he ran away because he didn’t want me anymore,” Samuel said.
Lillian moved her chair closer.
“You were a child,” she told him.
“You were never responsible for what happened.”
Samuel stared down at the postcards.
“Maybe not,” he said.
“But I’ve spent twenty-eight years trying to understand it.”
Mara asked permission to copy the addresses for her own notes.
Samuel declined because the cards were all he had left of that time.
She accepted his decision immediately.
I realized that finding the truth would not make every lost year return.
It might give people a more honest account of why those years were taken from them.
CHAPTER 15: Caroline’s Answer
Richard called Caroline on a Sunday afternoon while I was helping Aaron fix a leaking roof at the workshop.
She did not answer, but he left a message asking her to meet him alone.
He said he wanted to explain Mara’s departure and offer a settlement if Caroline would stop contacting people from Alder House.
She forwarded the message to her attorney and declined the meeting.
Later she called me with a question that had little to do with the investigation.
“Did you ever love someone and realize you trusted the version of them they performed?” she asked.
I looked at the unfinished roof flashing in my hand.
“Yes,” I said.
“But I don’t think every good memory was a lie.”
Caroline said she had found old postcards Richard sent her before their wedding.
