This was the room. Aiming his flashlight through the chest-high window, Ellis confirmed they were outside the office. A pair of stacked files awaited on the desk, just as Lily had described.
The only problem: the room’s lone window wouldn’t budge. He shoved harder, but the lock was set.
“How about this one?” Lily whispered, already moving on.
Ellis followed and beamed his light into the neighboring room. An array of toys denoted a play area. He tried to gain entry.
No luck. On to the next.
This one was a classroom.
Same result.
Just a handful of windows remained on the first floor, at least on this side of the building. Still, the odds of finding any of them unlocked looked slim.
It was a unique precaution in a town this small.
Lily shot him a glance, as if sharing the thought. Shadows underscored the apprehension in her face. But that didn’t stop her from continuing to another room, hands splayed, ready to give it a go herself.
“Hold on,” he cautioned. He needed to assess it first.
Not waiting, she gave the window a shove and brightened when it rose an inch.
She was driving him batty—for more reasons than this. But he couldn’t think about those now.
Fortunately, the space was vacant, another classroom resembling the first.
He stored the flashlight in his coat pocket, and they shimmied the pane upward, one side at a time, until the gap was large enough to climb through. Lily grabbed hold of the windowsill. It was too high to pull herself up, but her reluctance to ask for his help was evident.
His inclination to offer was almost as strong, in spite of any good sense. “Here, I’ll give you a boost.” He formed a step by lacing his fingers. Given the constraints of her work skirt, he squatted to an accommodating height.
What other options did they have?
After slipping out of her heels, she again grasped the sill. On his linked palms, she placed her foot, slick in a silk stocking, and pushed off. He averted his eyes from the length of her body, just inches from his face, as she stretched over him and into the room.
His turn to go.
He heaved himself up, wary of rattling the glass panes overhead. A low bookshelf aided his landing. Safely on the floor, he righted himself, just as his flashlight slid out.
Clunk. He swiped it up.
Breath held, they stared at the half-open door. It seemed to slowly swing wider on its own. A trick of vision at night.
Silence stretched out long enough to suggest they were in the clear.
With ragged sighs, they proceeded past orderly rows of school desks and chairs. Lily peered into the hallway before tiptoeing out. Ellis followed, still listening for signs of other movement. Three doors down, she stopped before the office—identified through the glass of the door—and gave the knob a twist. She looked at him, her worries magnified.
Locked.
Ellis wasn’t as troubled. Having a father who preferred tinkering with machinery to conversation came with a few benefits.
He handed her the flashlight. At her confusion, he put a finger to his mouth to quiet her. Then he reached over her shoulder and slid two hairpins from her updo. Her auburn locks unwound, falling loose around her neck. By then, she understood and scooted aside. She trained the white beam on the door.
On one knee, Ellis inserted the pins into the knob. It was a basic one, the sole reason he ventured to try. Besides a dumb impulse to impress her.
He needed to concentrate. It had been years since he’d done this—back in his rebellious period, on a dare to pick the lock of the door separating the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms. He was a hero among the fellas until the shrieks broke out.
Just like then, he maneuvered now by feel, despite rising doubt that he’d forgotten how. But then a mechanism moved, sliding free, and the lock lightly clicked. He turned the knob fully, and Lily smiled. For an instant.
She crossed the room and delved straight into a stack of folders on the desk. Ellis closed the door and nabbed the second pile. It didn’t take him long to finish. Most in his batch were related to utilities and permits and other regulated business.
Lily, meanwhile, fingered through records of children. She was slowing down, her attention lingering on their photographs. Notes of their circumstances were surely heartbreaking. Ellis gave her forearm a squeeze, a begrudging reminder that there wasn’t time for that. Not now.
She gathered herself and increased her pace. She was almost at the bottom.
There had to be more.
An upright file cabinet drew Ellis to the corner. He tried the handles on the three drawers. A lock at the top secured them all. Was the staff really that afraid of burglars? What the devil were they trying to protect?
That was when it struck him. All these locks—on the windows, the office, the cabinets—were used because of the children. To keep them inside but any links to their past out of reach.
“He’s not here,” Lily whispered before noting Ellis’s find. “Can you pick it?”
He shook his head. Even if he knew how, it was too small for the pins. “The key’s gotta be here somewhere.”
They quickly went to work, splitting up the room. Ellis ran his hands over surfaces in search of a hiding spot. Behind the file cabinet, atop the corkboard, above the doorframe.
“Ellis…” Lily was staring into a desk drawer. A drawer with more files. She looked up. “It’s him.”
He rushed to see for himself. Sure enough, in the second folder from the top, the boy’s picture was stapled to a page. Calvin, it read. Ellis knew that round face, those cupid lips. The thick lashes and impossibly large eyes, now turned sad. There was no listed surname. Just another kid from the street, parentless and unwanted. Except that he was none of those.
They skimmed the next sheet, and the next. There were signatures, a scrawled address—
A creak made Ellis turn. Lily winced. It was the sound of metal pipes, the weathered bones of a building settling. A good reminder to wrap things up.
Lily left the top page. She stuffed the other two in her coat pocket as Ellis replaced the file. With the classroom window still open, it was best to go out the way they came.
Another peek into the hallway, a locking of the door, and they were back at the bookshelf. It would be easier to help her climb down if he was on the outside. “I’ll go first,” he told her. He was just raising his knee when the room lit up. A near-blinding flash.
They spun around. A colored woman stood at the doorway, hand on the light switch, eyes bulged with fright.
“It’s me, it’s me,” Lily urged in a rasp, an attempt to prevent a scream. “From earlier. Remember?”
The woman shrank back, grasping the collar of her bathrobe, and her gaze cut to the file in Lily’s hand.
Lily pulled the folder to herself, protecting it. “The little boy I came for—Calvin Dillard—I just needed to know where he went. So I could speak with the parents who adopted him. He was never supposed to be here. Mildred, you have to believe me.”
Living in the building, presumably on the staff, Mildred must have known Calvin. She must have heard him speak about wanting to go home, or crying over missing his mom and sister.
But then, that probably didn’t differentiate him from half the orphans in the place.
Ellis questioned if adding his two cents would help or hinder, but he had to do something. “Please, ma’am. I’m sure you work here because you care a lot about children. So many of them, I’d bet, would give anything to be back with their real family.”
Mildred’s eyes lowered as she loosened her hold on her robe, though only slightly.
“We can help do that if you let us.” He stepped toward her without thinking, raising his hand in an appeal, and her face snapped up.
He’d ventured too close. He’d gambled wrong.
Then someone coughed. A man. Somewhere down the hall.
No one in the room moved.
A debate whirled in Mildred’s eyes. Her job and duty versus questionable claims from strangers breaking the law. It wasn’t much of a contest. She owed them nothing.
Ellis braced for her to flee and yell, sending an alarm to the staff. He prepared to grab Lily, to hustle her through the window, ordering her to run.
Then Mildred flicked a hand. “Go on, get,” she whispered. She was shooing them out.
Lily nodded readily. She scurried over to Ellis, who swiftly crawled out before guiding her down. Her stockinged feet had just landed when the window slid closed.
Ellis sent silent thanks to the woman behind the glass as Lily threw on her shoes. In seconds, the window went black.
Together they hurried back to the car. He started the engine in three tries and drove back toward the highway. Hands shaking from adrenaline, he glanced over to see how Lily was faring. Already she was examining the pilfered pages by flashlight.
“Briarsburg,” she said. “In Sussex County. That’s where Calvin went. It has to be…a half hour north?”
“About that.” It took him a moment to realize she wanted to go now. “Lily, it’s awfully late to make a house call.” His caution wasn’t about social graces. Disturbing the couple unannounced, particularly at this hour, might not be the best strategy.
Before he could say as much, she replied in earnest, “If the director notices the pages are gone in the morning, he just might beat us to the family.”
Ellis considered the possibility. She was right.
But then, when wasn’t she?
He reached into the back seat and rifled through his satchel. “You navigate, I’ll drive,” he said, handing her the map.
