Noah helped investigators rebuild the years. Fake names. Remote towns. Cash jobs. Fishing boats. Construction crews. Nights sleeping in trucks. Daniel teaching them never to use real birthdays, never to trust local police, never to say Lake Cumberland.

“He loved you,” Noah told me one night at the hotel. We were sitting on the floor, because chairs felt too formal for learning your child again. “He kept your picture in his boot.”

I cried without sound. “He should have come back.”

Noah nodded. “I know.”

“Are you angry at him?”

“Yes,” he said. Then, after a long pause, “And no.”