Even the expedited results would take at least two days.
The middle-aged man carried himself with an unmistakable air of wealth, yet he stood off to the side, fidgeting, opening his mouth and closing it again. Finally, all he managed was her name. "Hilda," he said, eyes rimming red. "That's a beautiful name."
With shaking hands, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a photograph. In it was a child, five or six years old.
He said the child had been wearing a small gold locket engraved with the family name when she went missing.
Hilda stared at the photograph for a long time, her thoughts tangling into knots.
Of course she'd seen that locket.
Grandma Nora had treasured it. It had paid for nearly half her schooling.
"This is insane," Hilda told her friend. "It feels like the first twenty-some years of my life were a lie, and now everything's been turned upside down."
They were sitting at a banquet. Hilda had tagged along on her friend's business trip, planning to check into a hospital to recover before dealing with everything else.
Her friend suggested, "Why don't you just ask your grandma what's going on?"
Hilda's hands went still.