Elias stood beside the same man near the park fountain.
Laurel studied the images.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“No.”
I did.
At first, my mind rejected the recognition. The photograph was grainy, and the man was turned partly away. His hair had been darker then, his shoulders straighter.
But I knew the shape of that face.
I had seen it across a dinner table every Sunday of my childhood.
I had seen it in framed photographs stored in my aunt’s attic.
My hands went cold.
“Michael?” Laurel asked. “What is it?”
I turned the photograph over.
A date had been written on the back.
Beneath it was a single name.
THOMAS HART.
Laurel looked from the photograph to me.
“Hart?”
I could barely hear her over the station announcements.
“My father,” I said.
The words did not feel real.
“My father died twelve years ago.”
Laurel stared at the photograph again.
The date on the back was from fourteen months earlier.
Three days before Elias disappeared.
