“He came back,” he said simply.
My stomach tightened.
“What did he say?”
Noah poked at his food for a moment before answering. “He said Gabriel misses you. And that you didn’t listen.”
Didn’t listen.
The words stayed with me long after Noah went to bed.
What didn’t I listen to?
Later that night, when I was putting away his clothes, I noticed something inside his jacket pocket.
A small folded piece of paper. Not something a five-year-old would normally carry. I unfolded it slowly.
It wasn’t random.
It was deliberate.
An origami figure.
A small paper crane.
My heart stopped.
Gabriel used to make those.
He had learned it from a YouTube video months before the accident.
He would sit at the kitchen table, folding paper again and again until he got it right. Then he would leave them everywhere—on my pillow, in Ryan’s car, inside Noah’s toy box.
No one else in our life knew about that.
No one.
My hands started shaking again.
The next morning, I didn’t go to work. I drove straight to the address listed in the report.
Daniel Brooks. It was a small house on the outskirts of the city—quiet, almost hidden, like someone who didn’t want to be found had chosen it carefully.
I sat in the car for a long time before getting out. My mind kept trying to convince me to leave.
To turn around. To go back to the version of reality that made sense.
But I couldn’t.
I knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again.
The door opened slowly.
And there he was.
The same face.
The same eyes.
But different.
Not aggressive.
Not defensive.
Tired.
Like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.
My chest tightened. “Why are you talking to my son?”
He closed his eyes for a brief second.
“I didn’t want to involve him,” he said.
“Then why did you?” I demanded, my voice rising despite myself.
“Why are you telling him that my dead son is still alive?”
His expression shifted.
Not in anger.
In pain.
“I never said he was dead,” Daniel replied.
The world tilted.
