They drove toward the outskirts of the city, where glass towers gave way to mud and smoke. The landfill stretched like a wasteland under a gray sky. Adrian stepped out in his tailored suit, walking among mountains of trash as Ethan guided him confidently.
They reached a makeshift shelter of plastic and cardboard.
“She stayed here,” Ethan said. “She taught us songs. Drew music notes in the dirt.”
Inside, taped to the wall, Adrian found a charcoal drawing of a piano. Beneath it, in handwriting he knew better than his own: Adrian will come.
His chest ached.
An elderly recycler approached. “They took her,” he said. “Men in a gray van. Headed to the old Brookhaven Sanitarium in the hills.”
Brookhaven was abandoned and remote.
Adrian called the police and his attorney as he drove. Fog swallowed the mountain road as his car sped upward.
At the rusted gates of Brookhaven, silence pressed in. They slipped inside.
Then Adrian heard it.
A faint humming.
A Chopin lullaby his mother used to play.
They followed the sound to a neglected courtyard. Under a twisted tree sat a wheelchair.
A thin woman wrapped in a dirty blanket turned her head.
“Adrian?” she whispered.
He dropped to his knees. “Mom.”