For six years, I blamed my son’s teacher, Mrs. Alder, for his disappearance at age seven, making her life miserable because she was the last adult to see him. She never defended herself, never sued me, and eventually left teaching and disappeared. After she died, her husband contacted me with a key and a letter she had left in her will.
The key opened a storage unit containing six years of private investigation files, maps, receipts, contacts, and countless dead ends. Mrs. Alder had spent every penny of her savings searching for my son long after the police had given up. Inside were birthday cards she had written to him every year but never sent, along with a photograph from his last day at school, showing him laughing happily. On the back, she had written: “He was so happy that morning. I need you to know that.”
