“I didn’t think that at the time. I assumed everyone would tell me to help her find her family. Who knows if the dad had a brother or a cousin who could take care of her? But I didn’t want to consider that option. I’m sorry for lying. It was selfish of me to want to give a little girl a better life.”

Oliver rolled his eyes, because he knew a pity party when he was invited to one.

“So the license plate number is gone?”

“I don’t know. I thought I had put it in this nesting doll in case I ever needed it, but it was so long ago. I remember coming up here with Vera a time or two to dig through ancestry records for her school project, but I don’t remember checking for it. Last I saw it was fifteen years ago, when we were moving. God knows where I might have misplaced it over the years.”

Oliver scratched his chin, smearing dirt into his day-old stubble. “Do you think maybe Vera found it?”

“Even if she did, it was just letters and numbers. I highly doubt she could have made any sense of them, or knew what they meant.”

My gaze skimmed across the gaping mouth of the chest, glancing at the relics from Alvera’s past. A flawed hero. In her own way, a dark horse of a woman who had done so much for women’s suffrage, and likely died for it. I picked up the stack of newspaper clippings chronicling her life.

“What’s that?” Oliver asked.

“Alvera’s life and death, summed up in a few pieces of paper.”

“Oh, wow, look at this.” Oliver lifted a loose article from the trunk and read it. “Her work in the women’s rights movement. This one is talking about her fundraising work.” Oliver gently handled it, set it down, and picked up another. “And here’s her marriage announcement in the newspaper. Can you imagine being forced to marry a man twice your age and having to produce his heir?”

I examined a picture of Alvera and Robert, noticing their stiff postures, and the misery etched across both of their faces. “Just because something’s the norm doesn’t make it right.”

“My mom told me that supposedly her personality changed after the baby was born.”

“Isn’t that when she disappeared?”

He nodded solemnly.