Chapter 36 Aftereffects
Mason quietly pushed the heavy oak door open just a fraction. He peered through the narrow crack, his breath catching in his throat.
Nathan, usually a towering, untouchable pillar of strength, was slumped in the armchair like a collapsed building. His broad shoulders sagged under an invisible, crushing weight. One large hand was pressed fiercely over his eyes, his head bowed so low it looked like his neck might snap. His chest hitched with silent, violent tremors.
An indescribable aura of utter desolation bled into the hallway.
Mason’s throat burned. He quietly pulled the door shut, his eyes stinging with hot, immediate tears.
Ever since Mason could remember, his father had suffered in silence.
The epilepsy was a closely guarded secret, managed by heavy medication, but the migraines were relentless. During the worst attacks, his entire body would seize and convulse. To the outside world, Professor Nathan Archer was a perfectly composed, flawless giant. But behind closed doors, he was a man holding himself together with sheer willpower.
Grandpa Brandon had once told Mason the truth: Nathan hadn't always been sick. In his youth, he had been an unstoppable force. His brain damage was the brutal price he paid for his devotion.
Years ago, Nathan and Alvin had chased a desperate lead. A rumor had surfaced about a kidnapped girl matching Chloe's description held captive on a remote Midwestern farm. They drove blindly through the night, straight into a catastrophic torrential storm.
While navigating a treacherous mountain pass, the saturated earth gave way. A massive mudslide swept their car entirely off the interstate.
In the violent chaos of twisting metal and crushing earth, Nathan had thrown his body over Alvin to shield the older man from the impact.
When rescue teams finally dug him out of the rubble, Nathan's skull was fractured. He was hemorrhaging massively. The local community hospital didn't dare attempt the complex craniotomy required to save him. Brandon had to wire exorbitant sums to charter an emergency medevac to the East Coast, assembling a joint team of elite neurosurgeons on an hour's notice.
They saved his life, but they missed the golden window for a full recovery.
Nathan was left with severe neurological scarring: epilepsy, chronic migraines, intermittent memory gaps, and the terrifying warning that a lethal stroke was almost guaranteed after he turned fifty.
Yet, even with a shattered brain, the moment a new lead surfaced, Nathan would drag his broken body out the door to keep searching.
His grandmother, Samantha, had screamed and fought with him countless times, begging him to stop destroying himself for a ghost. It was useless. He threw away prestigious academic opportunities, destroyed his own health, and bled himself dry.
It wasn't until six years ago, on her deathbed, that Samantha finally forced him to stop.
Mason clearly remembered that winter day. Chicago had just been buried under its first heavy snowfall.
Samantha had been wasting away in the ICU for weeks. As her final hour approached, she gripped Nathan’s hand with desperate, terrifying strength.
Mason, wearing a heavy black down jacket, had stood quietly in the corner of the hospital room. He watched his father—whose crushed leg always swelled and throbbed in the freezing snow—slowly lower himself to his knees beside the bed.
Nathan bowed his head, his broad shoulders shaking as tears hit the pristine white sheets.
"Mom..." Nathan had rasped, his voice gutted. "I'm sorry. I swear to you... I promise I'll never go looking for her again. Please, rest easy."
Tears leaked from Samantha's closed, sunken eyes. Her dry lips moved, repeating the demand like a mantra. "You promised me. You won't go to her anymore. You have to live well."
"I promise."
"Promise me... promise..."
"Yes, Mom. I promise."
Over and over, the dying woman demanded his surrender, and over and over, the broken man on his knees gave it to her. Amid the stifled sobs and heavy grief, Samantha finally slipped away, still burdened by her son's obsession.
After the funeral, Nathan kept his word. He locked the door on his agonizing, fruitless search.
Mason remembered that day perfectly, because Nathan had never cried like that again. He had built an impenetrable fortress around his heart, becoming the steadfast, stoic giant who raised Mason.
Until tonight.
Tonight, Mason had watched his father break down all over again.
Is it because of that woman? Mason thought, his fists clenching at his sides. Did she reject him? Does she despise him because he's older?
Mason gripped his calculus workbook, his chest aching with a heavy, protective fury. He just wanted his dad to be happy. Nathan was never truly happy. Even when he smiled, his eyes were always drowning in a bottomless, silent grief.
Mason retreated slowly to his bedroom, clicking the door shut. He tossed the workbook onto his desk, opened his bottom drawer, and pulled out a worn, dark blue notebook.
Carefully, he slipped a hidden photograph from between the pages.
It was old, the colors slightly yellowed and the edges frayed.
It showed a young Nathan, dressed simply in a white shirt, jeans, and a dark coat, sitting leisurely on a park bench beneath blooming cherry blossoms. The boy in the photo had his chin tilted toward the camera, smiling gently. The starlight and absolute, unburdened joy in his eyes were impossible to hide. Anyone could see how completely, foolishly in love he was.
Beside him sat a beautiful girl in a white sundress. She was leaning into his shoulder, holding up a silly "V" sign over her chest, her mouth stretched wide into a radiant, sunlit smile.
Mason stared fiercely at the photograph.
It was the only surviving picture he had of his parents together.
The year his mother supposedly died, Nathan had systematically locked away every single trace of her, burying the photos where Mason could never find them. But Mason had stolen this one and hidden it away.
When he was little, Grandma Samantha used to snap at him whenever he cried for his mother. "She's dead. Stop crying."
But Mason knew she wasn't dead. If she were dead, why would Nathan and Alvin have torn the world apart looking for her?
He had once taken this photo to Grandpa Brandon, pointing a small finger at the girl. "Is this my mom?"
Brandon had looked at it with a heavy sigh. "That is Nathan's wife."
"Then she's my mom," Mason had declared with absolute certainty.
Brandon had just patted his head and walked away.
But Mason knew the truth. His father was a man incapable of loving anyone else. If this radiant girl wasn't his mother, who else could she possibly be?
He knew she was just missing. People whispered rumors that she had run off with another man, but Mason found that violently ridiculous. How could any woman abandon a man as incredible as his father?
Others insisted she was dead.
Mason traced his thumb over the smiling girl's face. He refused to believe it. He believed, with every fiber of his being, that his mother was still out there. And he believed that one day, she would come back to them.
He just didn't realize the gold digger he had glared at across the dinner table tonight was the exact same girl staring back at him from the photograph.