The internet.
Public records.
Social media.
Whatever clues he could find.
Some Maple Street kids were easy to locate.
Others had disappeared completely.
A few had died.
Walter wrote that those were the hardest names to cross off.
When he found someone, he would sometimes spend a summer in their area, driving a local route until he found a natural way to contact them.
Then he would give them Margaret’s message.
You were loved.
It was real.
It mattered.
I was one of the people he could never find.
I had married.
Changed my last name.
Moved hundreds of miles away.
There was almost nothing connecting Sarah from Maple Street to the woman I had become.
Then one evening, while driving a random route hundreds of miles from Millbrook, Walter looked through the serving window.
And there was Ellie.
Nine years old.
My face.
My expressions.
My childhood standing in front of him again.
