Chapter 82 Bonus Chapter 10: The Woman in the Red Coat

Chapter 82 Bonus Chapter 10: The Woman in the Red Coat
Nathan lifted his hand with difficulty. It paused halfway through the air before settling, slowly, on Mason’s head.
The touch was so light it almost had no weight.
But Mason felt it.
Warm. Trembling.
“Daddy promises you.” Nathan’s voice was soft, but every word was clear. “I’ll be okay.”
Mason didn’t believe him.
He lay beside the bed and cried for a long, long time.
When he was too tired to cry anymore, he fell asleep.
In his dream, he saw a woman.
She stood very far away, wearing a red coat. The red was so bright it looked like a small fire burning in the middle of a gray world.
Her hair was golden brown and windblown, but she didn’t bother fixing it. She stood there like a tree rooted deep in the earth.
Mason wanted to walk toward her. He wanted to see her face clearly.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach her.
Every step he took brought her one step farther away.
Like chasing a leaf blown by the wind. Always just a little out of reach.
The woman smiled at him.
The smile was gentle. Like moonlight.
Then she turned and left.
“Don’t go!” he shouted.
The woman didn’t look back.
Her red coat fluttered in the wind like a flag, drifting farther and farther, until it disappeared into a field of white light.
Mason woke with a start.
The hospital room was quiet. The heart monitor still beeped softly. The curtains were drawn, with only a thin thread of light slipping through the gap and drawing a pale line across the wall.
Nathan was looking at him.
“Bad dream?” His voice was still faint, but stronger than before.
Mason nodded and threw himself into Nathan’s arms.
“Daddy, I dreamed about a woman. She left. I called her, but she didn’t turn around…”
Nathan’s body stiffened.
Only for an instant.
But Mason felt it. Like a string plucked once, trembling, then forced back into stillness.
“What did she look like?” Nathan asked.
“I couldn’t see clearly… She was wearing red.”
Nathan was silent for a long time.
The room was so quiet Mason could hear rain tapping against the leaves outside. One drop. Another. Another. Like a metronome keeping time.
“That was your sister,” Nathan said softly.
“Sister?”
It was the first time Mason learned he had a sister.
He lifted his head and looked at Nathan.
Nathan’s eyes were bright, as if there were light inside them.
But that light wasn’t happiness.
It was something far more complicated, something Mason was still too young to understand.
Like all the starlight in the world had been crushed to pieces and mixed with tears.
2017 · Winter
Samantha didn’t like Mason.
Mason didn’t know why.
All he knew was that every time he saw her, she said the same thing.
“Your mother didn’t want you.”
The first time he heard those words, he was still little.
It happened at a family gathering. Nathan was helping in the kitchen, and Mason sat alone on the living room sofa, hugging his teddy bear. Samantha walked over from the hallway and stopped in front of him, looking down.
Her expression was strange. Later, when Mason thought back on it, he could pick out impatience and disgust, but underneath that was something harder to name. Not exactly hatred. More like she had looked at him and seen every piece of fate she had never wanted to see.
“Your mother didn’t want you,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t loud.
But it was clear.
Every word struck like a nail.
Mason didn’t understand what didn’t want you meant.
But he understood from Samantha’s tone that it was something bad. The corners of her mouth drooped slightly. Her eyes carried a cold, appraising light, as if she were looking at an object she found disappointing.
So he ran to ask Nathan.
Nathan was in the yard fixing a bicycle, his hands stained black with grease. He crouched there with sunlight falling across his back.
“Daddy, why did Grandma say Mommy didn’t want me?”
Nathan’s hand stopped.
He looked up at Mason.
Sunlight lay across his face, making him narrow his eyes.
“Your mother didn’t abandon you.”
“Then why doesn’t she come see me?”
“She’s… somewhere very far away.”
“Farther than Grandma and Grandpa’s house?”
“Farther than that.”
“Then why doesn’t she call?”
Nathan was quiet for a moment.
Wind moved through the yard, lifting the white sheets on the clothesline until they billowed like an enormous embrace.
“There are no phones where she is,” Nathan said.
Mason believed him.
Because he believed Nathan.
Everything Nathan said was true.
Mason had never doubted that.
But after Samantha said it enough times, Mason began to waver.
Not because he doubted Nathan.
Because he doubted himself.
Had his mother really abandoned him?
Was he not good enough, so she didn’t want him?
Was he not obedient enough, so she didn’t want to come back?
He went to ask Alvin.
Alvin was smoking in the yard, sitting in his old wicker chair. Sunlight filtered through the maple leaves and scattered across his shoulders in uneven patches. A cigarette rested between his fingers, the smoke rising slowly until it turned pale blue in the light.
When Alvin heard Mason’s question, he was silent for a very long time.
Then he stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, turned his face, and looked at Mason.
His eyes were red.
“Your mother loved you very much,” Alvin said, his voice hoarse. “She risked her life to bring you into this world.”
Mason froze.
“Bring me into this world?”
Alvin looked at him. His lips moved as if he wanted to say more.
In the end, he only sighed.
He placed his hand on Mason’s head. That hand was rough, covered in calluses, but warm.
“Mason, there are some things you’ll understand when you’re older.”
Mason didn’t understand.
But he remembered.
His mother had risked her life to bring him into this world.
So she hadn’t abandoned him.
She had…
He didn’t let himself think further.
That answer was too heavy.
He was too young to carry it.
All he knew was that every time he thought about it, his chest grew tight, as if something had lodged there and refused to move.
He couldn’t name that feeling.
Years later, he would learn what it was called.
Grief.