"At eight, he was terrible at almost everything."
Mason smiled.
For a brief moment, the storage unit no longer felt like a place filled with grief.
It felt like a place where Owen had lived.
And that was something Mason had never expected to experience.
The drive back took nearly two hours.
Hannah drove while Mason sat in the passenger seat with Daniel's notebook resting on his knees.
Neither spoke much.
Outside, the landscape changed gradually from industrial buildings to open fields. The afternoon sun stretched across the road, and traffic became lighter as they moved away from the city.
Mason occasionally turned a page.
He found a list of birthdays.
Hannah's.
Caleb's.
Mia's.
His own.
He stopped at the last one.
MARCH 12.
Beside it, Daniel had written:
Ask Hannah whether Mace still celebrates birthdays. Probably doesn't. Buy him something anyway.
Mason laughed quietly.
"What?"
Hannah glanced at him.
"Your husband apparently planned to buy me a birthday present."
She smiled.
"He used to say you were impossible to shop for."
"He barely knew me."
"Apparently he remembered enough."
Mason looked out the window.
For years, he had imagined meeting Owen and explaining everything.
He would have told him about their mother.
About the foster homes.
About the searches.
About the motorcycle club.
He would have apologized for not being there.
But now he was discovering that Owen had already known many of those things.
He had found the petitions.
He had found the investigator.
He had found the notices.
He had known Mason had searched.
The tragedy was not that one brother had forgotten the other.
It was that both had been searching while believing the other might not want to be found.
"Do you think he was happy?" Mason asked.
Hannah did not immediately answer.
Then she said, "Yes."
"Even after everything?"
"Yes."
Mason turned toward her.
"How can you be sure?"
"Because he loved his children. He loved his work. He loved fixing old furniture. He loved terrible television programs. He loved making pancakes on Sunday mornings even though he burned the first three every single time."
Mason smiled.
"He burned pancakes?"
"Every time."
"That sounds like him."
"He was also happy when he talked about his childhood memories."
"Even the difficult ones?"
"Especially the memories of you."
Mason looked down.
Hannah continued.
"He used to tell Caleb that he had once had an older brother who could whistle louder than a train."
Mason smiled through the ache in his chest.
"He exaggerated."
"He said you could whistle from one end of the street to the other."
"I could."
"Then perhaps he wasn't exaggerating."
They drove another mile.
Hannah finally spoke again.
"There's something else about Daniel."
Mason waited.
"He never stopped looking at the photograph."
"What photograph?"
"The one you showed us at the hospital. The picture of the two boys."
Mason reached inside his vest.
He had carried the photograph for nearly forty years.
The edges were worn, and one corner had begun to separate.
Hannah glanced at it.
"Daniel had a copy."
Mason looked at her.
"What?"
"He kept it in his wallet for years. I found it after he died."
Mason carefully examined the picture.
"Where is it?"
"At home."
"Can I see it?"
"Of course."
She paused.
"He had written something on the back."
Mason turned the photograph over.
His own copy had no writing.
"What did he write?"
Hannah smiled faintly.
"Two names."
Mason waited.
"Mace and Owen."
He looked at the photograph again.
Then he slipped it back into his vest.
For the rest of the drive, he did not speak.
When Mason returned to the Iron Harbor clubhouse, Bear Sullivan was waiting beside the entrance.
The enormous biker stood with his arms folded across his chest.
He was six feet five, built like a refrigerator, and had a beard that made him look considerably older than his actual age.
He had been Mason's closest friend for more than twenty years.
He also possessed the rare ability to recognize when Mason needed a conversation and when he needed to be left alone.
Today, Bear apparently decided that Mason needed the first.
"How'd it go?"
Mason climbed off his motorcycle.
"We found the letters."
Bear nodded.
"All of them?"
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen?"
"Apparently there was an eighteenth."
Bear frowned.
"What happened to it?"
Mason looked toward the clubhouse.
"That's what we're trying to figure out."
Bear followed him inside.
The main room was quieter than usual. Several members were playing cards near the back. Luis Ortega was working on a motorcycle engine, while Denise Harper was organizing paperwork for the club's assistance fund.