Chapter 118
Chapter 118
The city after midnight is a circuit of obsessions, each block the negative of the last, all streetlights and wet pavement and the endless, mechanical churn of need. Derek’s SUV prowls the grid in low gear, wipers thumping out a rhythm that matches the pulse at the base of his skull. He’s been driving for two hours, maybe more; time on these nights is both elastic and absolute, a series of neon-lit tableaus that never add up to a narrative.
Ethan is not at his apartment. The door isn’t locked, but it takes Derek three tries to get the handle to turn, hands slick with rain and nerves. The place inside smells of ozone and spent electronics, the humidity waging a slow war against the pale wood floors and the parade of battered laptops along the windowsill. There’s a mug on the kitchen counter, ringed with the silt of instant coffee, and a backpack abandoned beside the fridge, straps tangled in a way that suggests panic, or at least impatience.
Derek stands in the entryway, taking it in: the untidy stacks of notebooks, a half-eaten protein bar welded to its wrapper, a hoodie balled up like a wounded animal beside the couch. He calls out—“Ethan, you here?”—but the echo is hollow, the apartment already forgetting the shape of its owner.
He opens the fridge on reflex: four bottles of water, two Red Bulls, and a Tupperware of something furry and green. He checks the bathroom—nothing. He scans the computer monitors for a clue, but the screens are black, save for the main display, which shows a running list of code, numbers blurring as the clock in the corner rolls over to 2:07 AM.
Derek reaches for his phone, hands jittery as he dials. The call routes straight to voicemail. He leaves a message, careful to keep his voice even: “Call me back, okay? Just let me know you’re all right.” He doesn’t hang up immediately, letting the silence at the end of the message drag out until the system cuts him off.
He flips through Ethan’s last knowns, the checklist of friends and contacts Ethan has ever trusted. He calls them in order, escalating from patience to threat in the span of fifteen minutes. Every call yields the same answer: “Haven’t seen him. He’s probably fine. Did you check the gaming café?” Derek logs each response in a notebook he keeps in the glove box, each negative filling him with more dread and less hope.
Next, the places: the gaming café, the all-night laundromat, the roof of the municipal garage where Ethan sometimes goes to smoke or stare at the city. Each time, Derek finds nothing but the residue of presence—an impression in a lawn chair, a torn candy wrapper, the faintest trace of vape cloud hanging above the lot.
By three, Derek is running out of locations and patience. He drives the riverfront, scanning the benches and overpasses, then swings by Ethan’s favorite bar, a shithole dive painted in black and hot-pink, the name spelled out in dying LED letters. The lot is empty. He parks anyway, letting the engine idle while he scours the dark for any sign of the boy.
The phone rings—an unfamiliar number. Derek grabs it, heart ricocheting. “Yeah?”
A pause, then: “Is this, um, Mr. Reeves?” The voice is young, uncertain, almost apologetic.
“Who is this?”
“Uh, I’m Miles. I know Ethan from, like, the hackathons? He, uh—he said you might call.”
Derek exhales. “Have you seen him?”
“No, man, not for a couple days. He sent me a weird message, though. Said he was going off-grid for a bit. That I shouldn’t worry. I figured it was, you know, a social media cleanse or something.”
Derek closes his eyes, the anger and worry braiding together until they’re indistinguishable. “Thanks,” he says, and hangs up.
He sits in the dark, the bar’s sickly lights flickering across the wet windshield, and tries to remember when parenting became a sequence of searches and half-truths. He thinks of Ethan as a child, the first time he patched up a skinned knee, the first time he had to explain why mothers sometimes leave and fathers sometimes lose their tempers. He wonders if any of it made a difference.
He checks the clock—nearly four now—and considers his options. He could start over, retrace every step. Or he could do what he’s been avoiding all night: call Virginia.
He finds her number in the favorites, taps it before he can talk himself out of it. The phone rings, once, twice, then connects. There’s a delay—a plane, maybe, or a dead spot on the line—but then her voice, small and echoing: “Derek?”
He breathes out, slow, then says, “Hey. Sorry to wake you.”
“I’m awake,” she says. Her voice is raw, barely there. “Are you okay?”
Derek considers lying, then lets it fall apart. “I can’t find Ethan.”
A pause, then: “He’s probably—” She stops herself. “Have you called everyone?”
“Everyone,” Derek says, and hears the bitterness in his own voice.
Another pause. He can almost hear her thinking, mapping out the emotional terrain. “What happened?”
He leans his head against the cold window, watching the rain collect in rivers down the glass. “He found out. About the tests. About Steven.”
“Shit,” Virginia says, the word soft but final.
“Yeah,” Derek says, voice scraping. “He left. I’ve been chasing shadows all night.”
Virginia’s breathing is audible, an anchor in the digital ether. After a long silence, she says, “I’m coming home.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. He can hear the train in the background, the clatter and rush of it, the announcement in a language neither of them quite speaks. He imagines her in a lonely train car, artifact on her lap, the world blurring by outside.
He says, “I should have told him sooner. I should have told you, too.”
“Derek,” she says, the syllable as sharp as a command, “don’t do that. Don’t start with the guilt.”
But he’s already started. He can feel it flooding up, submerging the usual self-discipline. He tries to hold it back, fails.
“There’s something else,” he says. “Something you don’t know. About me. About before.”
Virginia is silent for so long he thinks the call has dropped. But the line holds, the distance between them suddenly fragile and precious.
He takes a breath, and when he speaks, his voice is stripped of all defenses. “I wasn’t always the guy who builds things. I used to—before the Army, before any of this—I was part of a unit. We did things nobody wants to talk about. There was a mission. It went bad. There were civilians. There was a boy.”
He can’t stop. “He looked like Ethan. I can’t get his face out of my head. He was just there, in the wrong place. And when I got home, when I saw Ethan for the first time, I—” He stops, voice ragged. “I thought if I could do right by you, by him, it would balance the scales. Like if I was good enough, it would erase the bad.”
He waits, throat burning, for her to speak.
Virginia’s voice is quieter than before, but unyielding. “You don’t have to erase it, Derek. Nobody gets to start over. You just keep going.”
He nods, even though she can’t see. “I keep going. Right.”
“Have you checked the marina?” she asks, voice returning to its practical register. “He used to like the water.”
He blinks, the memory slamming into place: Ethan at seven, stealing bread crusts to feed the ducks, sitting on the end of the dock and kicking his legs over the edge. “No,” he says, “but I will.”
“Call me when you find him,” Virginia says. “I’ll be in the air for a while, but I’ll check in when I land.”
He wants to say something else—something about forgiveness, about how the world never makes room for second chances, about how her voice is the only thing that keeps him sane on nights like this. But he just says, “Safe travels.”
She says, “You too,” and the call ends.
Derek sits in the idling car for a long time, letting the warmth of the heater and the cold of the confession cancel each other out. Then he puts the car in gear, turns off the main road, and heads for the marina.
The city is quieter now, the rain easing into mist, the streetlights bleeding into one another. He drives with the windows down, letting the air clear his head. He can almost believe, in this moment, that the past is another country, and that somewhere ahead, in the fog and the dark, is a road that leads home.