“I’m guessing this could be Sam’s watch. It’s broken. The glass is cracked, and you can hear parts moving around inside, so something happened to it. And I think we know what. Look at the time.”

Ruth peered at the watch, and then a look of incredulity swept over her face. “Do you think?” she breathed.

“Doesn’t it make sense?” George said, looking up from the eyeglasses briefly.

“May I?” Ruth asked, gesturing toward the pocket watch before picking it up and holding it in front of her as if it were a sacred religious artifact.

“I am gazing at history,” she uttered, her voice breaking with emotion. “I am holding history in the palm of my hand. And I would very much like to be able to utilize an image of this for my—”

“PowerPoint presentation,” concluded Rebecca.

“Yes! And also for my book! I would very much like to arrange to have this extraordinary object photographed, and of course I will pay for the expense. Also Pauline’s spectacles,” she added.

“So now we know they’re Pauline’s?” Rebecca said. “Is this how scholarship works?”

“It is an educated guess,” Ruth said defensively. “A very educated guess. Would you prefer that I omit them? I do want to use the watch, in any case.”

“I am sure we can work that out.”

“May I ask you some questions now, Rebecca?” Ruth looked at her, her eyes shining with feeling. “You have already been far more generous than I could have dared to hope. This is very unique personal material you are sharing with me. Very, very unique.”

“Go ahead.”

“Let’s begin with the children. I have very good reason to believe, as I told you when we spoke on the telephone in September, that there were children present on the ninth floor that day, but they show up in neither the names of the living nor the names of the dead. I believe children must have died in that fire, but their presence in the Triangle factory was covered up. Did your grandmother speak to you about the children?”

“Yes, she did. But she only said that they were usually there, that there were always poor little girls working in the corner of the ninth floor they called the nursery. We never talked about what happened to them in the fire. My grandmother talked about this when I was little, because I remember her telling me they were my age, but they didn’t go to school, because they had to work. She taught me to sew, and we used to sew together and talk about what it would be like if I had to work at it for twelve hours every day instead of going to school or being allowed to play outside. She helped me make clothes for my dolls. She always made the buttonholes—she could make perfect buttonholes in seconds. I always loved watching her do it. She tried to teach me, but my stitches were always uneven.”