“Seventeen years,” Rachel said finally. “Seventeen years looking for you. Thinking you were dead. Mourning you. And you… you were here. Miles away. With another family.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Ethan stared at his father, emotions he couldn’t even name.
As a teenager he’d imagined a reunion a thousand times—amnesia, kidnapping, anything that could explain it.
But this was worse than any nightmare.
“Rachel, I—” Michael started, then stopped.
What could he possibly say?
“Why?” Rachel asked, pain now replacing rage. “Why did you do this to us? What did we do to deserve it?”
Michael lowered his eyes, unable to face his wife’s gaze, his son’s gaze.
A long minute passed before he spoke.
And when he did, his voice sounded like a broken man carrying a weight that had crushed him for years.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Never. It was mine. All of it. My fault.”
He spoke in fragments at first, like each word cost him something physical.
Rachel and Ethan stayed silent, even though every second felt like agony.