The call came just after eight.
Vince had already been awake, sitting at the small kitchen table with yesterday's coffee reheated past usefulness. The loaf from Rose Hill's sat where he'd left it, the paper torn but not opened further. He hadn't been avoiding it on purpose. It just hadn't entered the sequence yet.
The phone rang twice before he picked it up.
"Stone," he said.
Chief Mercer didn't bother with greeting. "You near your car?"
"Yes."
"Good. Don't go far. I need you by the station in twenty."
"For what?"
A pause. Not long. Measured.
"Something came in," Mercer said. "Probably nothing."
Vince hung up and stood without finishing the coffee. He pulled on his jacket, checked his pockets the way he always did. Notebook. Pen. Keys. The routine mattered more when things didn't.
Outside, the morning sat low and grey. Not fog exactly. Just air that didn't want to lift yet. He noticed the slowed car again - different make this time, same habit. It passed without stopping. The driver didn't look over.
He drove.
At the station, Mercer was already in his office with the door half closed. Voices leaked through. One of them rose too quickly, then cut off. Vince waited until Mercer waved him in.
On the desk sat a manila folder. New. Clean. That alone made Vince uneasy.
"You get this anonymous?" Vince asked.
"No," Mercer said. "Dropped off. In person."
"Who?"
Mercer shook his head. "Didn't stick around."
Vince opened the folder. Inside were copies. Old ones. School attendance sheets. Clinic intake logs. A maintenance schedule from the west wing of the school, stamped and initialed.
Caleb's initials showed up twice.
"Someone's building a story," Vince said.
Mercer watched him carefully. "Or correcting one."
Vince didn't respond. He kept scanning. Dates jumped out first. Not because they lined up, but because they didn't. Gaps. Reappearances. A boy marked absent for weeks, then present without explanation.
Tommy.
"You verify any of this?" Vince asked.
"Enough to know it's real paper," Mercer said. "Not enough to know why now."
"Why now matters."
"In Greyford," Mercer said, "timing's usually personal."
Vince closed the folder. "Who else has seen it?"
"Just us," Mercer said. "For now."
"For now," Vince repeated.
Mercer leaned back. "This is where I tell you to slow down."
"This is where you tell me to drop it."
Mercer didn't deny it. "People are on edge. You've been visible."
"That's the job."
"That's the problem."
Vince held the folder. It felt heavier than it should have. "You want me off this?"
"I want you careful," Mercer said. "And quiet."
Vince stood. "I already am."
Outside, he didn't go back to the car. He walked instead, folder tucked under his arm like something borrowed. He didn't know where he was headed until he was there.
The clinic.
Claire was at the desk, hair pulled back tighter than usual. She looked up, smiled, then stopped when she saw his face.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Nothing," Vince said. "Can I ask you something?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Off the record?"
"There isn't one," Vince said.
He didn't take the folder out. He didn't need to.
"Do intake logs ever get… adjusted?" he asked. "For kids?"
Claire's mouth tightened. "Adjusted how?"
"Late entries. Corrections."
"Sometimes," she said. "Depends."
"On what?"
"On who's asking."
Vince let that sit.
She looked past him, toward the hall. "If you're looking for something specific, I'd rather not know."
"I'm not," Vince said. That wasn't entirely true.
She nodded anyway. "Good."
As he turned to leave, she added, quietly, "Things written down don't always mean what people think they do."
Outside again, the air had lifted just enough to show the tree line clearly. He thought of Caleb's eyes, the way they'd drifted there.
He drove to the school.
The maintenance truck was gone. The west wing door sat shut, paint chipped around the handle. Vince tried it. Locked.
A man stood a few yards away, pretending to smoke. Vince recognized him from the diner. Not a name. Just a presence.
"You lost?" the man asked.
"No," Vince said.
"School's closed."
"I know."
The man nodded, like that settled it. "People get nervous when places get revisited."
Vince looked at him. "Why?"
The man exhaled smoke slowly. "Because last time didn't end right."
"That depends," Vince said, "on who you ask."
The man smiled, thin and quick. "Exactly."
Vince didn't push. He noted the way the man's hands shook, just a little, when he stubbed the cigarette out.
By late afternoon, Vince was back home. He laid the folder on the table, opened the loaf at last, tore a piece free. It tasted fine. Normal. That annoyed him more than if it had been stale.
He opened his notebook.
Wrote one line.
Then crossed it out.
Outside, the sound of a car slowing again. This time it stopped. Just for a second. Then moved on.
Vince closed the notebook without adding anything else.
He stood at the window until the light shifted and the street looked ordinary again.
Nothing had broken.
Nothing had been fixed.
The folder sat where he'd left it, edges clean, waiting to be dirtied.