A teenage girl who had vanished eight years earlier was located in another state, living under a name that was not hers, and her father, who had called the police every month for nearly a decade, was brought to see her.

There was no film-reunion.

She did not run into his arms.

They sat across a table in an office in near silence for the better part of an hour, because she was angry, and bewildered, and full of memories of a different family, and the law could restore her birth name but could not hand back the childhood that had been stolen from both of them.

And two of the children linked to Evelyn’s files were never found at all.