Mason looked up.
"What?"
"He told me that he had found your name, but he wasn't certain you would want to see him."
Mason's expression changed.
"Why would he think that?"
Patricia shook her head.
"He said he'd been gone for so long that he didn't know whether you had forgiven him for leaving."
Mason closed his eyes.
His brother had spent decades believing he might have been abandoned.
And Mason had spent decades believing the same thing about Owen.
Neither had understood that the other was living with the same wound.
"Did he say anything else?"
Patricia thought for a moment.
"He said he wanted to bring you something when he found you."
Mason's eyes opened.
"What?"
"A photograph, I think. He said it was the last picture he had of the two of you together."
Mason pulled the photograph from his wallet.
"This one?"
Patricia examined it.
"No. He said it was taken after he was adopted. You were both older than the boys in this picture."
Mason's hands trembled.
He remembered a second photograph.
It had been taken during one of their last visits before they were separated permanently. They stood beside a chain-link fence, Owen holding Scout while Mason tried to look serious.
Mason had lost the photograph during a move in his twenties.
He had searched for it repeatedly.
If Daniel had kept it, it might still exist somewhere.
"Do you know where it is?" he asked.
Patricia shook her head.
"He didn't tell me. He only said that it was in a safe place."
Mason looked down at the envelope.
For years, he had imagined that the final photograph of his childhood had disappeared forever.
Now he wondered whether his brother had preserved it, just as he had preserved the letter inside Scout.
Patricia thanked them and left.
When the door closed behind her, Bear approached the desk.
"What do you think?"
Mason looked at the documents.
"I think Daniel was trying to protect people who couldn't protect themselves."
Denise nodded.
"And he was trying to find you."
Mason placed both hands on the desk.
"I wish he had found me sooner."
Bear rested a hand on his shoulder.
"You can't change that."
"No."
"But you can make sure the truth doesn't disappear with him."
Mason looked toward the street.
The blue sedan had already vanished into the darkness.
He turned back to the desk.
"Then that's what we'll do."
That evening, Mason drove to the hospital and told Hannah about Patricia's visit.
She listened in silence, her expression becoming more troubled with every detail.
When he finished, she looked down at Daniel's notebook.
"He never told me how frightened he was."
Mason sat beside her.
"Maybe he didn't want to worry you."
"He was trying to find his brother and protect his family. Why didn't he let me help?"
Mason thought about the way he had hidden his own pain for decades, convinced that admitting loneliness would make him weak.
"Sometimes people think protecting their family means carrying everything alone."
Hannah looked at him.
"Did you do that, too?"
Mason gave a tired smile.
"Most of my life."
"And did it work?"
"No."
She nodded slowly.
"Then perhaps we should stop doing it."
Mason looked toward the pediatric ward.
"Perhaps."
They sat together for a while, sharing the silence of people who had both lost someone they loved and were only beginning to understand the life he had lived.
Then Hannah reached into her bag and removed Daniel's notebook.
"There is something else I found."
Mason turned toward her.
"What?"
She opened the notebook to a page marked with a folded corner.
A name had been written in the margin.
Evelyn Reed.
Beneath it was a telephone number and a short note.
Ask her about the night the boys were separated.
Mason stared at the name.
He knew it.
Evelyn Reed had been their mother's older sister.
The aunt who had visited them occasionally when they were very young.
The aunt who had disappeared from their lives after their mother's death.
Mason had spent years trying to locate her, but every lead had eventually gone cold.
He had been told she moved away.
Some said she had remarried.
Others claimed she had died.
He had never confirmed any of it.
Now her name had appeared in Daniel's notebook.
Mason looked at Hannah.
"Where did you find this?"
"Inside the back cover."
He took the notebook carefully.
The telephone number was old, but the area code belonged to a town less than two hours away.
Mason felt something shift inside him.
The truth about his brother might not be the only truth waiting to be uncovered.
There was still a missing piece in the story of their separation.
And perhaps the woman who had been absent from both their lives held the answer.
Mason waited until morning before calling the number.
He wanted to make sure Hannah had slept, that Mia's doctors had provided an update, and that Caleb would not be left wondering why his uncle had suddenly disappeared.
But the truth was that he was afraid.
Evelyn Reed had been a distant presence in his childhood, a woman who appeared occasionally with bags of groceries and a stern expression that made him feel he had done something wrong even when he hadn't.
He remembered her dark hair, her narrow face, and the way she spoke about his mother as though she were both proud of her and disappointed in her.
After their mother died, Evelyn had vanished.
Mason had assumed she wanted nothing to do with the boys.
Now he wondered whether that assumption had been wrong.
At nine in the morning, he called the number.
A woman answered.
"Hello?"
Mason swallowed.
"Is this Evelyn Reed?"
"Yes."
"My name is Mason."
Silence.
Then a small, broken sound came through the telephone.
"Mason?"
He closed his eyes.
"You remember me."
"Oh, my God."
The woman began to cry.
For several seconds, Mason could hear nothing but her breathing.
Then she whispered, "I thought you were dead."
Mason's heart tightened.
"Why would you think that?"
"Because I never heard from you. I wrote letters. I called the county. They told me you had been moved, and then they said the records were sealed. After a while, I didn't know where to look."
Mason gripped the telephone.
"You tried to find us?"
"Of course I did."
He looked away.
For decades, he had believed that no one in his extended family had cared enough to help.
Now the woman he had thought abandoned them was telling him she had been searching, too.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In Fairview."
"Are you still living there?"
"Yes."
Mason looked at the clock.
"I need to speak with you about Owen."
Evelyn's crying stopped.
"What about Owen?"
"He was Daniel Carter. He died last year."
There was a long silence.
Then Evelyn whispered, "Oh, sweetheart."
Mason felt his eyes burn.
"He was searching for me."
"I know."
Mason froze.
"What do you mean, you know?"
Evelyn took a shaky breath.
"Because he called me."
Mason stood so abruptly that his chair scraped against the floor.
"When?"
"Several years ago. He found my number through a distant relative. He asked whether I remembered your mother and whether I knew what happened after she died."
Mason struggled to speak.
"What did you tell him?"
"Everything I could remember."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know where you were. Owen didn't know, either. He said he was going to keep looking."
Mason closed his eyes.
For a moment, the years seemed to collapse into one terrible instant.
His brother had found Evelyn.
Evelyn had known that Owen was alive.
Both had been searching.
And Mason had remained unaware of both developments.
"Can I come see you?" he asked.
"Yes."
He ended the call and immediately contacted Hannah.
She agreed to join him once Mia's doctor had completed the morning examination. Caleb insisted on coming, and Mason promised they would make the trip together after Hannah arranged for a trusted family friend to stay with Mia during the visit.
Bear offered to drive, but Mason chose to take his truck.
He wanted the journey to be quiet.
He wanted time to think.
As they left the city, Caleb sat in the back seat with Scout on his lap.
Hannah rode beside Mason, holding Daniel's notebook.
For the first half hour, nobody spoke.
Then Caleb asked, "Is Aunt Evelyn your aunt or my aunt?"
Mason glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
"Both, if the family connection is what we think it is."
Caleb considered that.
"Then I have a lot of relatives I don't know."
Hannah reached back and touched his knee.
"You do."
"Why didn't Dad tell us?"
Hannah thought carefully before answering.
"Because he didn't know everything. He grew up without many answers about his childhood, and he spent a long time trying to find them."
"Was he sad?"
"Sometimes."
Caleb looked down at Scout.
"Did he miss Uncle Mason?"
Mason kept his eyes on the road.
Hannah answered gently.
"I believe he did."
Caleb nodded.
"Then I'm glad we found him."
Mason felt his throat tighten.
He had heard people say similar things before, but hearing them from a child who had lost his father made the words feel different.
He was no longer simply searching for his brother.
He was becoming part of the family Owen had left behind.
Fairview was a quiet town surrounded by farmland and low wooded hills. Its main street contained a grocery store, a pharmacy, a small library, and a diner with a faded sign above the entrance.
Evelyn lived in a modest house at the end of a residential road.
The paint had begun to peel around the windows, and a small garden occupied the strip of land beside the driveway. A wind chime hung from the porch roof.
When Mason pulled into the driveway, the front door opened.
Evelyn stood on the porch.
She was seventy-eight now, with white hair and a slight stoop. But Mason recognized her eyes immediately.
He stepped out of the truck.
For several seconds, they stared at one another.
Then Evelyn descended the porch steps and reached for him.
Mason allowed her to embrace him.
She held him tightly, crying into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
Mason closed his eyes.
He had imagined confronting her.
He had imagined asking why she had abandoned them, why she had allowed the county to separate two brothers, and why she had never found a way to bring them together.
But standing in front of her, he saw a frightened old woman who had carried her own unanswered questions for decades.
He gently returned the embrace.
"Let's talk."
Inside, Evelyn had prepared coffee and a plate of cookies.
She seemed startled when Hannah introduced herself as Daniel's widow, and she began crying again when Caleb placed Scout on the table.
"That's the bear," she whispered.
Mason stared at her.
"You remember it?"
Evelyn nodded.
"I gave it to your mother before Owen was born. It belonged to my son, who died when he was very young. Your mother kept it for the boys."
Mason looked at Scout.
He had assumed the bear came from their mother's belongings, but he had never known its earlier history.