"That was part of the problem," James said, leaning over her shoulder. "Too many unfamiliar faces. Half the statements in this file say some version of 'I assumed she worked here.'"
Maya turned another page. This one was a staff list for the night of December 18, cleaner than the rest — a single typed roster of everyone present in the building between six and midnight, compiled by police in the days after Lily vanished. Someone, twenty-five years earlier, had worked through it with a pen, ticking names, adding question marks, underlining twice.
Her eyes moved down the list without urgency at first, reading strangers.
Then she stopped.
One name on the list had been circled. Not ticked, not underlined — circled, firmly, in blue ink, the pen pressed hard enough to indent the paper.
Rebecca Carter.
Maya read it again. Then again, as if repetition might rearrange the letters into somebody else.
"That's—" Her voice failed. She cleared her throat. "That's my mother's name."
The archive room went completely silent except for the dripping water.
Eleanor leaned in. "What?"
"Mom," Maya said. "Rebecca Carter. She worked here? She—"
She pushed her chair back so abruptly it scraped against the concrete floor, and stood. The folder stayed open on the table, the circled name facing up like an accusation.
"No," she said. "No, this isn't — she was a nurse, yes, in Colorado. She never said she worked in Boston. She never said she even lived here. There could be another Rebecca Carter. It's a common name. It has to be a common name."
Nolan spoke carefully. "We'll verify it, Maya. Social Security records, employment—"
"She raised me in Colorado," Maya said, louder. "She was my mother. She took me to the dentist. She sat up with me when I had pneumonia. She—" Her breath broke. "She wouldn't—"
But the sentence had nowhere to go, because the facts were standing in a row now, refusing to be separated: the hospital bracelet in the closet box that read Baby L.W. A mother who never liked talking about her daughter's birth. A mother who worked, apparently, in the very clinic on the very night a baby disappeared — a baby her daughter turned out, by DNA, to be.
Eleanor had not moved. Her face had drained of color, and her hand pressed flat against the table as if the room were tilting.
"Rebecca," she said, very quietly. "At the restaurant, when you told me her name, I thought... I told myself it was coincidence. There are Rebeccas everywhere."
"You knew?" Maya turned on her. "You suspected her and you didn't say anything?"
"I suspected nothing," Eleanor said, and her voice cracked. "I hoped. There's a difference, and the difference has been killing me for three weeks. I didn't want to put that in your mind before there was proof. You loved her. You were grieving her long before you met me."
"And now there's proof she was here." Maya gestured at the folder, shaking. "That's all this proves. That she was here. It doesn't prove she took me."
"No," James said gently. "It doesn't."
"Then why was her name circled?" Maya demanded. "Who circled it?"
Nolan examined the page. "Probably the original detective, in 2002. A person of interest notation, most likely. It doesn't mean she was charged, or even interviewed successfully — there's no statement from her in this file, which itself is strange. She may have left Boston before they reached her. We'll find out."
Left Boston. For Colorado, Maya thought. With a baby.
She could not breathe the archive's cold, dusty air anymore. "I need to get out of here."
"Maya—" Eleanor rose.
"Please. Just — let me go. Please."