MY DAUGHTER GAVE A HUNGRY BOY HER SANDWICH—THEN I SAW HIS NECKLACE

Elise’s letters helped investigators build the rest of the case. She had seen a little boy in Ben’s car and heard Paul argue with him about “keeping the mother away.” She wrote to me twice, but gave both letters to Paul to mail. When he found out what she suspected, he told her the boy wasn’t Noah. She did not challenge him again until news of the bakery spread.

I was angry with her for waiting. I was angrier with Paul for making her doubt what she’d seen. Lewis took the letters, the photographs, and Elise’s statement. What would happen to each adult now belonged to the investigation and the courts.

Noah’s immediate future was clearer. He was home.

Home, at first, frightened him. He saved crackers in a drawer. He asked permission to drink water. When I went to the grocery store, he stood at the window until I returned.

So I told him where I was going and when I’d be back. I came back when I said I would. If I was delayed, I called Rachel so he knew. We did that again and again, until one afternoon I walked in carrying milk and found him too busy arguing with Lily over a board game to notice.

We talked about Daniel in small pieces. Noah wanted updates, then didn’t. He kept one photograph of his father on a shelf and sometimes turned it facedown. I let him decide which way it faced.

Daniel admitted what he had done. Ben and Paul were held accountable for their parts in keeping Noah away. None of that returned the lost years. It did give Noah a chance to hear the truth without having to rely on the people who had lied to him.

On Noah’s tenth birthday, we went back to the bakery. He had asked to go. Lily ordered two cinnamon rolls and announced that she was paying with money she’d saved.

We sat near the window. Noah wore his half of the silver airplane over his sweater. Mine rested against my collarbone.

“Can we put them together?” he asked.

I unclasped mine. He fitted the pieces in his palm, front to tail, until the little plane looked whole again.

“I thought if I found you, everything would go back to how it was,” I said.

“I don’t remember how it was.”

“That’s okay.”

He separated the pieces and handed mine back.

“I like having my own half,” he said. “That way I know we can find each other.”

Lily leaned across the table. “I found you first.”

“You found my sandwich,” Noah said.

“And you,” she replied.

He grinned. Then he broke his cinnamon roll in half and gave her the bigger piece.

Outside, people hurried past the bakery, carrying bags and calling to one another. Inside, Noah brushed sugar from his fingers and asked what we were doing tomorrow.