“Anything interesting in there?” Jack asked from across the shop.
He crouched near a low table, a neat line of photograph albums already stacked to one side. He opened each one, examined the contents, then closed it and set it aside before reaching for the next. Methodical. Controlled. He worked the way he always had—like details formed a kind of prayer.
“Mostly first editions and classics,” Annie said. “Beautiful pieces, but nothing that screamsfamily secret.” She lifted a leather-bound copy ofJane Eyreand tilted it so he could see the embossed spine. “Though I’m starting to think the Blackwoods had excellent taste in literature.”
“They had the money for it,” he replied.
They’d been at this for hours, combing through the estate inventory with the same deliberate rhythm they’d once used in evidence rooms and courthouse basements. No wasted motion. No assumptions left untested. It surprised her how naturally it returned—the unspoken coordination, the way they divided tasks without discussion, the subtle shifts when one of them found something worth a second look.
It didn’t feel like returning to an old partnership.
It felt like continuing one.
She worked through another stack.Little Women.Great Expectations.A collection of sermons printed in 1912. A slim ledger that turned out to be nothing more than a book club record from the 1940s. She documented each title in her notebook, marking condition and value out of habit, even as she hunted for clues.
“Look at this,” Jack said, holding up a photograph.
Annie closed the book she’d been examining and crossed the shop. The image showed a group of people arranged on the wide stone steps of the Blackwood mansion. Men in tailored suits. Women in long dresses and cloche hats. At the center stood a tall, severe-looking man with his hand resting on the shoulder of a young woman who held a toddler on her hip. Another little girl clung to the woman’s skirt, half-hidden in the folds of fabric.
“That has to be Thomas and Eleanor,” Annie said. “And their daughters.”
“1920s,” Jack said. “Based on the clothing. The architecture too.”
“Eleanor looks so young.”
“Twenty-seven when she disappeared.”
Annie leaned closer.
Eleanor’s face drew her in. Delicate features. Dark, observant eyes. A faint smile that suggested restraint more than joy. The longer Annie studied her, the more she felt the quiet pull of recognition—not familiarity, exactly, but resonance. As if Eleanor had lived a life where silence mattered.
“She’s beautiful,” Annie murmured. “They look…happy.”
“Appearances usually behave,” Jack said quietly. “Especially in families with that kind of money.”
She glanced at him, catching the weight beneath the words. But he was already returning the photograph to its sleeve.
They resumed their work.
Pages whispered. Boxes shifted. Sunlight crept inch by inch across the floor.
The ordinary sounds of the shop soothed something in her. For minutes at a time, she forgot the alley. The message. The hospital.
“Jack,” she said suddenly, pausing over a brittle document. “What first made you doubt Eleanor’s disappearance?”
He stopped, considering. “The timeline. And the gaps. But mostly the timing.”
She waited.
“She vanished in March of 1927,” he said. “Two weeks before her nephew Richard’s eighteenth birthday.”
“Her nephew?”
“Thomas’s sister’s son.” He set the document down. “According to the family tree, Richard stood next in line if Thomas died without a male heir.”
Annie’s thoughts aligned. “Eleanor had two daughters.”
“And no sons,” Jack said. “At least, none recorded.”
