“Yes,” I answered.
Behind Kate, Mason opened the truck door and climbed down carefully with his dinosaur tucked beneath one arm. He came toward us slowly, looking from his father’s wet face to mine, and I realized with a fresh wave of pain that this child had just become part of a story too large for him to understand.
Daniel looked at him, then at Kate. “We need to go home.”
Kate nodded quickly. “There’s more.”
The way she said it turned my blood cold.
“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.
Kate’s face tightened with dread. “Roy had a locked cabinet in the trailer, and I didn’t get through all of it.”
Daniel looked at me then, and I saw the moment he understood that finding each other was not the end of the road. It was only the first door opening into a room full of things Roy had hidden.
We drove back to Kate’s house in two cars, but it felt like all of us were being pulled by the same invisible rope, tied to a dead man’s secret and the wreckage he had left behind. Daniel rode with Kate and Mason, while I followed close behind, afraid that if I let their truck get too far ahead, the world might change its mind and steal him from me again.
The house looked different when we returned, no longer ordinary, no longer harmless, no longer just a small place with toys in the yard and wind chimes trembling on the porch. It had become the final room of a nightmare, the place where truth had been stored in boxes while I spent twenty years grieving a living child.
