Chapter 9: The Drive to Millhaven
Reyes drove.
I sat in the passenger seat and watched the highway lights go by.
Evan was in the back, buckled in, wearing a borrowed coat two sizes too big.
We had called his mother — her name was Sandra, and she had cried for four minutes straight on the phone before she could form a full sentence.
She was meeting us at the facility.
She didn't know yet about Ryan's arrest.
We would tell her in person.
Evan didn't sleep on the drive.
He sat quietly and looked out the window.
About forty minutes in, he said, "Is he going to know who I am?"
"We don't know exactly what he remembers," I said carefully.
"The doctors say he's been getting better.
But we should be ready for the fact that it might take him a moment."
Evan thought about that.
"That's okay," he said.
"I'll remind him."
I turned back to face the road.
Reyes glanced at me sideways.
I shook my head slightly.
Not now.
The facility was a low building set back from the road, surrounded by old trees.
It looked quiet.
It looked like the kind of place that tried hard to feel like somewhere other than what it was.
Sandra was in the parking lot when we arrived.
She was a small woman with dark circles under her eyes and her arms wrapped around herself against the cold.
When she saw Evan get out of the car she crossed the distance between them in three steps and held him.
Evan let her.
After a moment he held her back.
She looked up at me over his shoulder.
"Is it true?" she said.
"Everything they told me on the phone?"
"Most of it," I said.
"We'll go through all of it.
But right now — yes."
She closed her eyes.
"I didn't know," she said.
"About the bruises.
About what he was doing when I wasn't home.
I didn't know."
"I know you didn't."
"Evan never—"
"He was protecting you," I said.
"He's been protecting you for a long time."
She made a sound that wasn't quite a word and held her son tighter.
The facility director met us at the entrance.
She was a calm woman named Dr.
Osei who had clearly been briefed by phone and had chosen to lead with practicality.
"He's been more alert this week than he has been in months," she said as she walked us through the corridor.
"Yesterday he wrote a name on a notepad.
We didn't know what it meant."
"What name?" I asked.
She glanced at me.
"Marcus," she said.
I stopped walking for half a second.
Then I kept going.
She led us to a room at the end of the hall.
The door was half open.
She knocked gently and pushed it wider.
The man in the bed was thinner than I remembered.
His hair had more gray in it.
There was a scar above his left ear, faded but visible.
He was sitting up slightly, looking toward the window.
He turned when we came in.
He looked at Dr.
Osei.
Then at Reyes.
Then at Sandra, and something moved across his face — recognition, and pain, and something complicated underneath both.
Then he looked at Evan.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
Evan stood in the doorway, too still, holding his breath.
Then Daniel said, quietly and clearly, "There he is."
Evan crossed the room.
He didn't run.
He walked, carefully, like he was afraid of breaking something.
He reached the side of the bed and stood there, and Daniel reached out and put his hand on top of Evan's head the way you do with a child you have been missing for a very long time.
Evan's face crumpled.
"I found your brother," he said, his voice muffled.
"Like you said."
"I know," Daniel said.
"I know you did."
I stayed in the doorway.
Sandra had one hand pressed over her mouth.
Reyes was looking at the ceiling.
Daniel looked up at me over Evan's head.
He looked like himself.
Older, thinner, marked by everything that had happened — but himself.
My brother.
"Hey, Marcus," he said.
May you like
My voice came out smaller than I intended.
"Hey, Daniel."
