The lantern bore the name Ada, scratched beneath the handle. Museum volunteer Ivo assumed it belonged to a keeper's wife. He wrote the possibility on a draft label, then paused before printing it.
An equipment list identified Ada as the small supply boat that once carried the lantern. The keeper inherited it when the vessel was dismantled. A photograph showed the same dent near the hinge while the lantern still hung aboard. What looked like a personal dedication was an inventory mark.
Ivo found a genuine dedication elsewhere: a paper note inside the keeper's repair manual thanking his sister for mending a coat. It was less picturesque than the name on the lantern, but it carried an actual relationship in words someone had chosen to write.
The exhibition displayed both objects without forcing them into the same story. Visitors learned where the lantern came from and whom the keeper thanked. Ivo kept his abandoned label in the research folder as a reminder of how close an attractive guess had come to becoming a fact repeated by everyone who walked through the room.