“I’m fine.”

“No, please take my chair.”

Myron winced and slid out from the desk. “Maybe we can just stand if that’s okay.”

“Sure thing. I’m excited about your research. By the way—and I don’t know if this will interest you or not—I’ve been teaching fifth grade in this very same classroom for twenty-one years now.”

“Wow,” Myron said.

“I love this age. They’re no longer little kids who can’t understand deep concepts; they aren’t yet adolescents with all the hardship that entails. Fifth grade is nicely on the cusp. It’s an important transitional year.”

“Mr. Dixon.”

“Please call me Rob.”

“Rob, I bet you’re a great teacher. You look like that cool young teacher we all loved, except you’re older and probably wiser, but you didn’t get all jaded.”

He smiled. “I love the way you put that. Thank you.”

“And thank you. But I may be here under false pretenses.”

He put his hand to his chin. “Oh?”

“I’m here to talk to you about a specific, tragic event.”

Rob Dixon took a step backward. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m the one who saved Patrick Moore,” Myron said. “But I’m still trying to figure out what happened to Rhys Baldwin.”

Rob Dixon stared out the window. A boy Myron guessed was around six hopped over to a rope and started to swing on it. The glee on his face—Myron wondered when he had last seen someone so lost in joy.

“Why come to me?” he asked. “I had neither as a student. And I probably wouldn’t have had. See, we try to make sure teachers don’t get siblings. It isn’t a rule or anything. The principal just thinks it’s not a good idea. You come in with preconceived notions or, at the very least, a past with the parents. So even if they had stayed in school, I probably wouldn’t have taught either boy.”

“But you did teach Clark Baldwin and Francesca Moore.”

“How do you know that?”

“Clark told me.”

“So?” Dixon shook his head. “I really shouldn’t talk about it anyway. I thought you became a sports agent. That’s what the documentary said. After your injury, you went to Harvard Law School and then opened your own agency.”

“That’s true.”

“So why are you involved in this?”

“It’s what I do,” Myron said.

“But the documentary said—”

“The documentary didn’t tell the whole story.” Myron stepped toward him. “I need your help, Rob.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Do you remember that day?”

“I can’t talk to you about this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s confidential.”

“Rob, a boy is still missing.”

“I don’t know anything about that. You can’t possibly think—”

“No, nothing like that. But I’m asking you. Do you remember the day the boys went missing?”

“Of course,” Rob Dixon said. “You never forget something like that.”

Myron debated what to ask next and then decided to cut right to it: “Were Clark and Francesca here?”

Rob Dixon blinked several times. “What?”

“The day their brothers went missing,” Myron continued, “were Clark and Francesca in your classroom? Were they both in school? Did they leave early?”