“Lily actually transferred schools,” she said. “That was her last day here.”
I drove directly to Lily’s house.
A man answered the door.
“Can I please speak with Lily?” I asked. “She was with my son the day he disappeared. I just need to know if he said anything.”
The man stared at me for a long moment. Something in his expression hardened.
“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s staying with her grandparents for a while.”
He started closing the door, then paused.
“If she knows anything, I’ll tell her to contact you.”
Then the door shut.
I stood there on the porch with a strange feeling in my chest, an instinct telling me something about that conversation was wrong.
But I didn’t know what to do.
The weeks that followed were unbearable.
Friends helped me put up flyers. I posted everywhere online. Police searched nearby towns.
But as the months passed, the investigation slowed.
Eventually people began using the word runaway.
I refused to accept that.
Ethan wasn’t the kind of boy who disappeared without a word.
And I never stopped searching.
Almost a year later, I traveled to another city for a work meeting. Life had slowly forced itself forward—work, grocery shopping, Sunday calls with my sister—but the absence of my son followed me everywhere.
After the meeting ended, I stopped at a small café and ordered coffee.
While waiting at the counter, the door opened behind me.
An elderly man walked in slowly, bundled against the cold. He counted coins in his palm, looking as though he might not have eaten much lately.
Then I noticed his jacket.
My heart stopped.
He was wearing Ethan’s jacket.
Not one like it—the exact one Ethan had worn the day he disappeared.
I knew because of the guitar-shaped patch covering a torn sleeve. I had sewn that patch myself. There was also a faint blue paint stain across the back.
I turned to the barista.
“Please add that man’s tea and a bun to my order.”
The barista nodded.
The old man turned toward me with a grateful smile.
“Thank you, ma’am, that’s very—”
“Where did you get that jacket?”
He looked down at it.
“A boy gave it to me.”
My pulse raced.
“Brown hair? About sixteen?”
He nodded.
Before I could say anything else, people stepped between us at the counter. By the time I moved around them, the old man had already walked outside.
“Wait!” I rushed after him.
The sidewalks were crowded and I struggled to keep up.
But then I noticed something strange.