Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
He closed the vinyl cover with a soft slap. “We need to meet your mother at the library. She went ahead to look at the old county records from that summer.”
We walked down the narrow attic stairs, leaving the heavy air behind us, and drove into town without speaking.
At five o’clock, the basement of the Oak Ridge Public Library was cool and smelled of damp paper and old floor wax. Clara sat at a long oak table in the corner, her wire-rimmed reading glasses slid down to the bridge of her nose.
She had brought her old magnifying glass down from the parlor shelf before leaving the house, and the brass handle glinted under the green library lamp. The heavy glass was cool to the touch, its rim worn smooth by years of her grandmother’s fingers.
“Look at this, Andrew,” Clara said, her voice quiet but firm.
I leaned over her shoulder, smelling the faint starch of her collar and the peppermint she kept in her purse.
