For a moment, they were children again.
Two brothers standing beside their father's workshop.
Two boys who believed the world was simple.
Daniel reached him.
Thomas opened his arms.
They embraced.
Neither brother said anything.
They didn't need to.
Years of silence disappeared inside that single embrace.
After a while, Thomas stepped back.
"I thought you'd forgotten me."
Daniel shook his head.
"I never did."
Thomas looked at the badge Daniel was carrying.
"You kept it."
Daniel smiled.
"You told me to."
Thomas touched the old metal.
"I wasn't sure anyone would."
"I did."
They sat beside the lake.
The sun disappeared slowly behind the trees.
Daniel told him everything that had happened.
Thomas listened.
Then he looked toward the water.
"You know what the strangest thing is?"
"What?"
"For thirty-eight years, I thought the badge represented everything I had lost."
Daniel waited.
Thomas smiled.
"Now I think it represents everything we survived."
Daniel looked at his brother.
The badge was scratched.
Old.
Almost forgotten.
But it had survived.
Just like Thomas.
Just like the truth.
And as darkness settled over the lake, Daniel finally understood something he had spent nearly four decades learning.
Sometimes justice does not arrive quickly.
Sometimes it takes years.
Sometimes it takes decades.
Sometimes the people who deserve answers die before they ever receive them.
But truth has a strange quality.
It can be buried.
It can be hidden.
It can be denied.
It can be forgotten.
But if even one person remembers where it was buried, it can rise again.
Daniel looked at Thomas.
"Are you coming home?"
Thomas smiled.
"Yes."
Daniel nodded.
"Good."
They sat together in silence.
Behind them, the road stretched toward Bellwood.
Ahead of them was the lake.
And somewhere between the two was the rest of their lives.
The badge remained in Daniel's pocket.
Not as evidence.
Not as a symbol of the police department.
Not even as a reminder of the past.
It was simply a promise.
A promise between two brothers that no matter how many years passed, no matter how far they were separated, and no matter how powerful the people who tried to hide the truth became—
They would never let each other disappear again.
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