I couldn't take my eyes off the second young man.
His hair was darker than Thomas's, and his face was slightly broader, but the resemblance was too strong to dismiss. They shared the same narrow chin, the same deep-set eyes, and a faint crease between their eyebrows that made them look perpetually concerned.
“Could they be brothers?” I asked.
Rebecca Lawson sat down at her father's desk.
“Possibly. My father never mentioned another child connected to Thomas.”
Daniel examined the photograph's edges.
“There's something written here.”
He tilted it toward the window. Beneath the date, in smaller handwriting, were the words Bell family archive.
I felt the old uneasiness return.
Arthur Bell had funded Northfield. My father had visited the school. Thomas had stayed there. And now a photograph connected the boy to a family that had apparently spent decades keeping records out of sight.
“Rebecca, did your father know anyone in the Bell family who had children around Thomas's age?”
She thought for a moment.
“Arthur had a nephew named Michael. He was a few years older than Thomas. I met him once when I was a child, but I don't know what became of him.”
“Was he the man in the photograph?”
“I can't be certain.”
Daniel set the photograph down.
“We need the school records.”
Rebecca opened a drawer and removed a folder containing correspondence from the county archive. She explained that the original student files had been transferred to a local historical collection when Northfield closed. The archive required advance notice for access, but she knew the archivist and offered to call.
While she made the call, I opened the blue notebook.
Most of the entries were administrative: dates, initials, expenses, and brief notes about children who had attended the school. Several pages had been removed, leaving torn edges along the binding.
Near the back, I found an entry dated June 14, 1994.
Thomas asked whether his mother had written again. I told him I had received nothing. He said he understood, but I believe he no longer trusts what we tell him.
Below it was another entry, written in a different hand.
Michael visited today. He insists that Thomas has a right to know the truth. I advised him to speak to Robert first.
I read the lines aloud.
Daniel leaned over the desk.
“Michael was trying to tell Thomas something.”
“Something about his mother, perhaps.”
“Or about Dad.”
I turned another page.
A final entry had been underlined.
June 18. Robert arrived unexpectedly. He took Thomas away before morning. Michael was furious. He said this was exactly what the others wanted.
The room seemed to go quiet around me.
June eighteenth was the day my father had returned home after his three-day absence.
But the notebook suggested he had taken Thomas away from Northfield on that date, not simply returned home from somewhere else.
I checked the surrounding entries again, hoping I had misunderstood the sequence. The handwriting was clear. Thomas had been at the school on June fourteenth. My father had arrived four days later and removed him.
“Why would Dad take him away?” I asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“Maybe something happened at the school.”
“Then why did Peter Lawson write that Thomas was settling in?”
“Because things can change.”
Rebecca returned with a telephone number and an appointment for the following morning.
“The archivist says the student files are available,” she told us. “There may be restrictions on certain personal records, but we can at least inspect the public documents.”
I thanked her and placed the notebook back in its folder.
Before we left, I asked whether she knew where Michael Bell lived.
“I don't,” she said. “But I can try to find out. Arthur had a sister who lived in another state. Michael may have moved with her.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Evelyn.”
The name struck me like a physical blow.
I looked at Daniel.
“Evelyn Bell?”
Rebecca nodded.
“My father referred to her as Arthur's younger sister. She had a son, I think. But I was too young to understand the details.”
For a moment, I couldn't speak.
The woman in the photograph was no longer simply my father's cousin or a frightened visitor who had disappeared. She was connected to Arthur Bell through a direct family relationship, and her son might have been Michael's half brother, cousin, or something else entirely.
We still didn't know enough to be certain.
But the family tree was beginning to emerge from the shadows.
On the drive back, Daniel searched through public records on his phone. He found an obituary for Evelyn Bell, published twenty-three years earlier in a newspaper from another state. It listed no children, only a brother, Arthur, and a nephew named Michael.
“Evelyn died?” I asked.
“According to the obituary.”
“When?”
“Seven years after Thomas went to Northfield.”
I stared through the windshield.
“If she died in the late nineties, Thomas would have been a teenager.”
“Or older, depending on his actual age.”
“Why did Dad never tell us?”
Daniel didn't answer.
He enlarged the obituary and read the final paragraph.
The service was private, with arrangements handled by a legal representative. No burial location was provided.
“That is strange,” he said.
I asked him to search for Michael Bell.
He found a business registration in a nearby county, then an address associated with a small property management company. The company had dissolved several years earlier, but the address was still listed in public records.
We drove there before heading home.
The property was a modest brick building with a faded sign and a locked front door. A neighboring shop owner told us that the office had been closed for years and that the owner rarely visited.
“Do you know where he lives now?” I asked.
The man shrugged.
“Somewhere north of here. He comes through once or twice a year.”
“What's his name?”
“Michael Bell.”
Daniel showed him the photograph.
The shop owner studied it, then pointed at the young man beside Thomas.
“That looks like him when he was younger.”
My pulse quickened.
“You know him?”
“Not well. He bought supplies here once. Quiet fellow. Always seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Did he ever mention a woman named Evelyn?”
The man shook his head.
“But he did ask me whether I knew anyone named Robert Ellis.”
I felt the world narrow around that sentence.
“When?”
“About six months ago.”
The same period when someone had reopened the storage unit using my name.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I didn't know the man.”
Daniel and I exchanged a glance.
The shop owner went back inside, leaving us standing beneath the gray afternoon sky.
For the first time, I believed the person sending us warnings might be connected directly to the family whose records we were searching.
Michael Bell had been asking about my father six months ago.
Someone had reopened the storage locker around the same time.
And now we had discovered a notebook showing that Michael had challenged my father's decision to remove Thomas from Northfield.
I looked at the photograph again.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “we find out what happened at that school.”
Daniel nodded.
Neither of us noticed the dark car parked across the road until it pulled away from the curb.
The driver kept his face turned toward us as the vehicle passed.
I caught only a glimpse through the window.
But it was enough to make my breath stop.
The man looked like the older version of Thomas.
Click here to continue reading: PART 12: The School Records Revealed Why My Father Removed Thomas, but One Missing Page Suggested Someone Had Altered the Truth
The Moment My Daughter Began Crying, I Realized There Was Something She Had Been Afraid to Tell Me
Part 11 of 13
