delight in including him on her frequent lunch and dinner outings. But lately, well, I couldn’t help but worry. Cassandra, tall, blond—everything I wasn’t—hadn’t dated anyone seriously since they broke up, just a few months before Ethan and I had met. And the rumor among newspaper staff was that she had never got over him. I walked past her desk, also empty, and nervously tugged at my wedding ring.
Lunch arrived at noon, and I tucked a twenty-dollar bill into the hand of the deliveryman, whose hat was covered in a fresh dusting of snow. “Thanks, ma’am,” he said, nearly bumping into Abby on his way out the door.
“I smell Thai!” she exclaimed, clutching a thick file folder.
I opened up a box of noodles smothered in peanut sauce, and the sweet scent wafted in the air. “One spring roll or two?”
“Two,” Abby said, taking a seat on the floor, where she opened up the file folder and began spreading papers on the carpet. “Research makes me hungry. And just wait until you see what I found.”
I handed a plate to her and took a seat beside her on the floor. “So?”
“So,” she said, handing me a photocopied newspaper clipping dated May 7, 1933, “read this.”
I scanned the first few paragraphs of the story, but nothing jumped out at me. “It’s just a roundup of the police blotter for the week,” I said. “Transients arrested, petty theft—am I missing something?”
“Yes,” Abby said, before taking a bite of noodles. She pointed to a paragraph halfway down and I redirected my eyes. “Snow halts visit from Prince George.”
“Really? You’re getting excited about a visit from a dull British monarch?”
“Well, it’s the backstory that’s fascinating,” she said, handing me another news clipping. “Apparently, he was courting a Seattle woman. If it weren’t for the storm, Seattle may have had its very first princess.”
I frowned.
“No love for royals?”
“Abs, I didn’t even have Diana fever when everyone had Diana fever,” I said, setting my half-eaten plate on my desk with a sigh. “There’s got to be something else.”
I picked up the news clipping again and read it halfheartedly, hoping to find something, anything—and then my eyes stopped.
“‘Three-year-old Seattle boy, Daniel Ray, reported missing on the morning of May 2, from his home in Seattle. Suspected runaway.’”
“Sad,” Abby said. “Lost the day of the snowstorm.”
I nodded. “My sister has a three-year-old. They don’t run away at that age.”
“So you think he was abducted?” Abby asked, leaning in for a closer look at the article.
“Well, it’s the only thing that really makes sense,” I said, standing up and taking a seat at my desk. “But let’s see what we can find out. I keyed the boy’s name into a library database and several results popped up. I clicked on the first, and scanned the page to find more details from the police. The boy’s mother was Vera Ray. I read quickly before turning to Abby. “She came home from work, and he had disappeared,” I said. “She found his teddy bear in the snow.” I placed my hand on my heart. “My God, how heartbreaking.”
Abby nodded. “Do you think they ever found him?”
“I don’t know,” I said, clicking through the remaining articles. “There doesn’t seem to be any conclusion here.”
Abby leaned back against the wall near my file cabinet. “What about the mother?”
I searched for her name, and clicked on the first result that came up. “Look,” I said. “Her name is in several police reports.” I selected all and sent them to the printer down the hall.
I keyed in the boy’s name again, and studied one of the article clippings more closely. “This is all from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, not the Herald. Did we not report on it?”
Abby eyed the list of articles. “Oddly, it looks like we didn’t,” she said. “The Herald must have missed the story entirely.
I clicked on another link, this one returning an article with a photograph of the young boy with light hair and plump cheeks. His big, round eyes stared back at me. I clutched my belly, feeling the familiar ache, and closed my eyes tightly.
“Claire,” Abby whispered, “are you OK?”
“I will be when I figure out what happened to this boy,” I said. I couldn’t explain it to her, or even to myself, but there was something about this child, little Daniel Ray from 1933, that spoke to my heart.
Abby grinned. “So I take it you found your story?”
“Yes,” I said without taking my eyes off the screen.