Over the following months the case ground forward.

Fergus found Dell Pratt in Pennsylvania.

It was not a movie reunion.

Dell was an older man worn thin by regret, with unsteady hands and a small quiet life, and he wept when he saw Fergus and asked to be forgiven for not being brave enough to fight my mother years ago.

Fergus didn’t embrace him right away.

He sat across the table and said, “Start from the beginning.” And Dell did.

He told Fergus everything: how young he had been, how completely my mother had convinced him that vanishing was the one gift he could still give the boy, how the fear of the accusation she’d threatened him with had followed him for years like a shadow he could never quite outrun.