Sophie’s face tightened.
“What did you do?”
“I stopped him.”
“That sounds good.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
Wade leaned against the bench.
“I had already been leaving home for weeks at a time.”
“Sleeping at friends’ places.”
“Riding with people my father hated.”
“I thought staying away meant I wasn’t becoming him.”
He looked toward the garage doors.
“All it really meant was Emily was there without me.”
Lauren asked carefully:
“Did she run away?”
“Yes.”
Wade reached beneath his shirt.
A thin chain appeared.
Attached was a small brass key.
He stared at it.
“The night she left, she came to this old apartment I was renting.”
“She had a backpack.”
“Two shirts.”
“Forty dollars.”
“And this little drawing.”
“What drawing?” Sophie asked.
Wade went into the office.
When he returned, he carried an old folded paper sealed inside a clear protective sleeve.
He opened it.
The drawing was simple.
A black bird.
One wing lifted.
The other folded.
Beneath it, written in teenage handwriting:
ONE DAY I’M GOING SOMEWHERE NOBODY KNOWS ME.
Sophie reached toward the plastic.
Wade guided her fingers only after asking.
She felt the raised edge where the paper folded.
“Did she leave?”
“Yes.”
“Did you stop her?”
“No.”
Wade’s voice became heavier.
“I helped.”
Lauren looked at him.
That was the first secret.
He had never told anyone.
“My father reported her missing the next morning.”
“I told police I didn’t know where she went.”
“That was a lie.”
Lauren asked:
“Where did you send her?”
“Asheville.”
“My mother had an old friend there.”
“Emily knew her.”
“I bought the bus ticket.”
“Gave her every dollar I had.”
Sophie asked:
“Did she get there?”
Wade closed his eyes.
“I didn’t know.”
The story had lived inside him so long that saying it aloud felt like moving machinery rusted in place.
“Two days later, police found Emily’s backpack near a river outside Newport.”
“Her jacket was inside.”
“Somebody reported seeing a girl matching her description walking near the highway.”
“Search teams looked for a week.”
“They never found her.”
Lauren whispered:
“So everyone assumed…”
Wade nodded.
“My father said I had driven her out.”
“He didn’t know I bought the ticket.”
“But I knew.”
“I spent years believing she left because I failed her.”
Sophie touched the bird again.
“Is that when you got this?”
“Two months later.”
“Why the hurt wing?”
“Because I thought she died trying to fly away from us.”
Sophie went silent.
Then asked:
“But you said that’s what you thought.”
Wade looked toward the locked drawer beneath the workbench.
He did not move for several seconds.
Finally he took out the brass key from his neck.
The drawer opened.
Inside were only a few objects.
A photograph.
An old cassette tape.
A folded newspaper clipping.
And a postcard.
Wade lifted the postcard with both hands.
His fingers trembled.
Lauren noticed.
“When did you get that?”
“1997.”
Three years after Emily vanished.
Sophie tilted her head.
“What does it say?”
Wade read.