He had asked whether she was coming home.
She kissed his forehead and said she was trying.
A dark green car arrived, and she climbed inside.
Elliot did not see the driver.
“Did she seem frightened?” I asked.
“She looked tired.”
“Were there signs somebody was forcing her?”
“I didn’t see anybody touch her.”
Naomi had told me to be careful with the distinction between evidence and inference.
I thanked Elliot for making it himself.
He unfolded the map.
A red pencil circle marked an abandoned mill outside Hanover.
“She drew this before she left,” he said.
“I thought it was where she wanted me to go if something happened.”
“Did you go?”
“No.”
He looked at Florence.
“I was fourteen, and everybody kept saying I was safe only if I stayed quiet.”
Chapter 12: The Mill Road
We did not rush to the abandoned mill.
Naomi insisted that a historical location was not a reason to trespass on private property.
She checked the parcel records and found the land had changed hands five times since the library-card date.
The current owner was a retired teacher named Henry Bellamy.
He agreed to meet us at the roadside the following afternoon.
Henry stood beside an iron gate with two walking sticks and a notebook of his own.
He had bought the property for its creek frontage and never restored the mill.
“You aren’t the first people to ask about the old office,” he said.
“Who else asked?” I replied.
“Two men came last year.”
He showed us a dated note with a vehicle description and a company name.
The company was Pike Heritage Services.
Henry said the men claimed to be searching for lost equipment.
He refused access after they could not describe the equipment.
We told him about the old charity, the map, and our mother’s disappearance.
He led us to the gate but warned that the building was unsafe.
We remained outside.
From the road, I could see a brick foundation, a collapsed roof, and the outline of a loading bay.
Henry remembered a caretaker finding hundreds of wet papers when a storm damaged the roof a decade earlier.
Most had been ruined.
A few had gone to the county historical society.
He gave us the archivist’s name.
Elliot stared toward the old loading bay.
“I remember this place,” he said.
Florence squeezed his arm.
“You’ve never been here with me.”
“Malcolm brought us in a truck once.”
He recalled carrying sealed cardboard cartons across a loading platform.
