The Reunions Department
Stories about things and people lost and then, against the odds, recovered. We try to honour the years between as much as the moment itself.
10 pieces in this section
A boy in Cape Cod tossed a bottle into the surf in 2024 with a note and his grandmother's address. Eighteen months later, a fisherman in County Clare found it intact and wrote back.
Marcus Bell · Jun 7, 2026 · 5 min read
A young couple cleaning out a Minneapolis attic found a leather-bound diary written by a teenage girl in 1942. Six months of research led them to her surviving granddaughter.
Lila Renshaw · May 31, 2026 · 5 min read
Yvette Carrington bought a hand-stitched quilt at a thrift store in Memphis for forty-two dollars. The label inside led her to a family that had been mourning the loss for nine years.
Priya Mehta · May 24, 2026 · 5 min read
A hiker on Mount Greylock found a corroded Olympus point-and-shoot at the base of a tree. The rolls of film inside, developed by a lab in Boston, led to a family that had not seen these faces in twenty-two years.
Owen Tate · May 17, 2026 · 5 min read
A renovation crew in Buffalo found a brown leather wallet behind a bathroom wall. Inside was a license issued in 1994, eighty-three dollars in cash, and a photograph that had been missed for thirty years.
Wren Calloway · May 10, 2026 · 4 min read
In 1976, the children of Hartland, Vermont, buried a steel box behind the elementary school. Half a century later, the town gathered to read what they had left for themselves.
Marcus Bell · May 3, 2026 · 4 min read
A sixteen-year-old in Ocean Grove dug up a heavy gold ring with a blue stone and the year 1972. He spent his spring break finding the man it belonged to.
Lila Renshaw · Apr 26, 2026 · 4 min read
Eli Markham was sweeping a harvested field outside Bloomington, Indiana, when his detector chirped over a gold band engraved with two names and a date in 1979.
Priya Mehta · Apr 19, 2026 · 4 min read
A nurse in Portland and a librarian in Glasgow had been mistaken for each other their whole lives by strangers who could not have known why. A consumer DNA test finally explained the resemblance.
Owen Tate · Apr 11, 2026 · 5 min read
When a Pennsylvania contractor pried open a kitchen wall in Scranton, he expected horsehair plaster and old wiring. He did not expect a sealed envelope addressed to a woman who had been waiting since 1944.
Wren Calloway · Apr 3, 2026 · 4 min read