Chapter 2: The Woman From the Past
Ethan didn’t sleep that night.
By morning, he had already made calls most people in Seattle could never make in a lifetime.
Private records. Missing persons archives. Shelter databases.
And then—at 9:14 a.m.—he got a hit.
Clara Reed.
Last known residence: Tacoma, Washington.
Status: missing for 10 years.
No updates. No confirmed sightings.
Until now.
Ethan stared at the screen longer than he wanted to admit.
Oliver was sitting at the kitchen table drawing something intensely focused.
“What are you drawing?” Ethan asked.
“My brother,” Oliver said simply.
Ethan didn’t correct him this time.
Instead, he picked up his phone.
“We found the boy,” he said into the call. “Now I need to find his mother.”
It took three days.
Three days of tracing shelters, hospitals, old employment records.
And then he found her.
Clara Reed.
Not missing.
Not dead.
Alive.
Working at a small community clinic in South Seattle.
When Ethan saw her again, it wasn’t in a dramatic confrontation.
It was in a hallway.
She was carrying medical files, hair tied back, face older but unmistakable.
The moment she looked up and saw him—
she stopped breathing.
“You…” she whispered.
Ethan’s voice broke slightly. “You disappeared.”
Clara’s grip tightened on the files. “I didn’t disappear. I ran.”
His eyes hardened. “With my child.”
That landed like thunder.
Her lips parted, but no words came.
And then quietly—
“I didn’t know he survived,” she said.
May you like
That was when Ethan realized the truth wasn’t simple.
It never had been.
