It was never going to.

But it stopped the woman who was taking them, and it found the ones who could still be found, and it stands now as a permanent, documented record that this happened, so that the next Evelyn Hayes will find a community that knows to check.

That is the most any of us could do.

It was not enough.

It was also everything we had.

And I have made my peace with the terrible arithmetic of that, the way you make peace with weather: not by understanding it, but by learning to keep walking through it while still, somehow, being grateful for the sun on the days it comes.