Chapter 8
Nobody slept that night.
How could we?
My father had been dead for eight years.
Then alive for thirty-seven seconds on a grainy video.
Bruised.
Scared.
Determined.
Coming home, he had said.
But he never came.
Ava sat beside me at the clubhouse table with a blanket around her shoulders.
Every few minutes, she looked at me like she was checking if I would disappear too.
I kept my hand on the table.
Close enough if she wanted it.
Not touching unless she chose.
Hank replayed Dad’s last video once.
Then again.
On the third time, Tess noticed something.
“Pause.”
The screen froze behind Dad’s shoulder.
A wall calendar.
A logo on it.
Riverside Veterans Outreach.
Hank leaned closer.
“That closed years ago.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Arkansas.”
Carla made calls.
The outreach center had been shut down after funding violations.
The director had died.
Records were gone.
But the Iron Saints had a chapter near Little Rock.
By morning, they found an old volunteer who remembered a man named Eli.
“He helped runaway kids,” the volunteer said. “Kept his name off books. Said dangerous people were looking for him.”
“When did he leave?” Hank asked.
“Three years ago. After a girl showed up with men behind her.”
Ava went still.
“What girl?”
The volunteer hesitated.
“She called herself Grace.”
Ava covered her mouth.
“I went there. I was sixteen. I didn’t know he was there. I ran when I saw men watching the place.”
I stared at her.
“You were that close to Dad?”
She began crying.
“I didn’t know.”
Hank’s face tightened.
“Eli left because he thought they were using Ava to find him.”
The trail picked up again.
Arkansas to Oklahoma.
Oklahoma to Texas.
Each place tied to shelters, veterans’ homes, missing children cases.
Dad had spent years chasing the network from the shadows.
Then two years ago, nothing.
No sightings.
No phone pings.
No whispers.
Until Brenda called from Tennessee.
Her voice shook.
“Brandon, your mother wants you home.”
My chest tightened.
“What happened?”
“She remembered something.”
We drove through the night.
Ava came with me.
She was terrified to return, but she said, “If Maya loved my dad, I want to meet her.”
Mom cried when she saw Ava.
Not delicate tears.
Deep, aching ones.
She held Ava’s face like she was seeing Dad and guilt at once.
“I should have found you.”
Ava whispered, “Everybody keeps saying that.”
Mom sobbed harder.
Ava looked at me.
Then slowly hugged her.
“I’m tired of blaming people who were lied to.”
Those words changed the room.
Mom told us what she remembered.
“Eli sent one postcard after the fire.”
I stared.
“What?”
“I thought it was cruel. It had no name. Just one line.”
She handed me an old cookbook.
Inside the back cover was a faded postcard.
A mountain road.
On the back, Dad had written:
The blue ridge remembers what fire tried to hide.
Hank took it.
“Blue Ridge.”
“There are hundreds of miles of mountains,” Carla said.
Mom shook her head.
“No. Eli’s grandfather had land near Boone, North Carolina. A hunting cabin.”
My pulse jumped.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Rick found the card. He said it was fake. He burned the envelope. I hid the card because I wanted to believe.”
Ava touched the postcard.
“He might be there.”
“Or he was,” Hank said.
That was enough.
We left before dawn.
This time, Mom came too against every doctor’s recommendation and everyone’s better judgment.
“I lost him once by staying home,” she said. “Not again.”
The cabin sat at the end of a dirt road swallowed by trees.
Old.
Weathered.
Silent.
A padlock hung from the door.
Fresh scratches marked the metal.
Someone had been there recently.
Hank cut the lock.
Inside, dust covered everything.
But not evenly.
A blanket had been used.
A coffee cup sat by the sink.
On the table was a map covered with red circles.
Ava picked up a photograph.
Dad.
Older.
Gray in his beard.
Standing beside a group of children outside a shelter.
“He was alive,” she whispered.
A floorboard creaked behind us.
I turned.
A man stood in the back doorway holding a shotgun.
Thin.
Bearded.
Eyes like mine.
For one impossible second, time stopped.
Then my mother whispered, “Eli.”
The gun lowered.
My father stared at us like we were ghosts.
His eyes landed on Ava.
Then me.
May you like
His face broke.
“My children.”
