Chapter 3 - The Other Boy
Ethan Madden chose the meeting place.
A twenty-four-hour diner beside an abandoned bowling alley, twelve miles north of my house.
“Come alone,” he said.
I almost laughed at the cliché.
Then he added, “And leave the burner phone at home. If you bring it, I’ll know.”
That stopped me.
“How?”
“You’ll understand when you get here.”
The line went dead.
I stood in my front hallway with rain dripping from my jacket and stared at my mother.
She still held Owen.
He had finally fallen asleep, his cheek resting against her shoulder, one tiny fist curled beneath his chin. The sight should have calmed me. Instead, every instinct in my body fought itself at once.
Ethan had told me not to let Lenora leave with my son.
Lenora had told me not to find Ethan.
Both of them clearly knew more than I did.
That made trusting either one impossible.
“I’m taking Owen with me,” I said.
My mother’s grip tightened.
“No.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“He should not be in a car tonight.”
“He should not be in a house with a tracker sewn into his blanket either.”
“You don’t know what is waiting outside.”
“I don’t know what is standing inside.”
The words hurt her.
I saw it.
I said them anyway.
I carried Owen upstairs, changed him, buckled him into his infant seat, and packed a diaper bag with shaking hands. Every ordinary object felt absurdly precious. Bottles. Formula. Two sleepers. A packet of wipes. Claire had bought the bag online during her third trimester because she liked the stupid fox pattern on the side.
I had complained that it cost too much.
Now I would have paid any amount of money to hear her tease me about it again.
I took my service flashlight, a tire iron from the garage, and my father’s old pocketknife from the desk drawer. I was not a violent man. I had spent eleven years working emergency transport and later hospital logistics, surrounded by people who tried to keep strangers alive. I knew exactly how quickly a human body broke.
That was why I wanted something in my hand.
Lenora watched me prepare.
“You really think I would hurt him?” she asked.
I looked at Owen.
“I think I don’t know what you would do to keep a secret.”
She swallowed.
“That is fair.”
It was the worst answer she could have given me.
I took the burner phone from my pocket and placed it inside a metal cookie tin in the pantry, then shut the lid. Maybe it did nothing. Maybe it blocked whatever signal Ethan was worried about. I did not know.
My mother followed me to the garage.
“At least let me come.”
“He said alone.”
“He may be lying.”
“So may you.”
She closed her eyes.
I strapped Owen’s seat into the back of my Subaru and got in.
Before I closed the door, Lenora gripped the roof of the car.
“If Ethan tells you I stole you from Elise, ask him who gave him that story.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Ask him.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t.”
“You know what he believes.”
“I know what somebody wants him to believe.”
“Who?”
She stepped back from the car.
“That is what your father died trying to find out.”
I drove away furious enough to taste metal.
The diner’s sign buzzed pink and blue in the rain. Only three cars sat in the lot. I parked beneath a security light where I could see the entrance and kept Owen with me.
Inside, a waitress pointed toward the last booth.
The man from the photograph stood when he saw me.
In person, the resemblance was worse.
Not identical.
Not enough that anyone would mistake us for brothers at first glance.
But enough.
He had my height, maybe an inch more. His hair was darker. His face was leaner. Yet the line of his eyebrows and the way his mouth tightened before he spoke felt like watching a version of myself shaped by a harder life.
His eyes dropped immediately to the car seat.
“You brought him.”
“You told me not to leave him with my mother.”
A strange expression crossed his face.
“I didn’t think you’d listen.”
“I’m having a night full of surprises.”
I slid into the booth with Owen beside me.
Ethan stayed standing for a moment, then sat across from us.
Up close, I saw the scar near his eyebrow from the photo. I had a scar in almost the same place, earned when I was nine and ran into the corner of a kitchen cabinet.
Coincidence, I told myself.
My brain had become a machine for inventing meaning.
“You’re Elise Madden’s son?” I asked.
“That’s what the state says.”
“And what do you say?”
“That depends on what Lenora told you.”
“Not enough.”
He smiled without humor.
“That sounds like her.”
“You know my mother?”
“I know of her.”
“You called me and told me not to let her leave with Owen.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because thirty-four years ago, she left St. Agnes with a baby who had been listed under my mother’s name.”
The words landed exactly where Lenora had predicted.
I leaned back.
“Who told you that?”
For the first time, Ethan’s expression shifted.
“Why?”
“Answer the question.”
He studied me.
“Julian Kane.”
I felt cold.
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“Why would he talk to you?”
“Because I found him first.”
Ethan reached inside his jacket.
My hand moved toward the pocketknife automatically.
He noticed.
“Relax.”
“Not tonight.”
He pulled out a folded envelope and slid it across the table.
Inside were photocopies of court records, an adoption certificate, and a newspaper clipping from 1992. The clipping showed St. Agnes under investigation after a former nurse alleged irregular infant placements.
The nurse’s name had been blacked out.
“What is this?”
“My life.”
He pointed to the adoption certificate.
“I grew up in Lowell. My parents were decent people. They told me I was adopted when I was twelve. When I was twenty-eight, my father died and my mother gave me the sealed paperwork she’d kept from the agency. Most of it was fake.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the agency never existed.”
I looked down.
The document bore a letterhead: NEW HORIZONS FAMILY SERVICES.
“Shell office,” Ethan said. “Registered for fourteen months. Same mailing address as a law firm that represented St. Agnes.”
“And you traced it to Kane.”
“Eventually.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That my biological mother was Elise Madden. That I had been born at St. Agnes. That during the first day, there was confusion between two boys. He said Lenora panicked and took the wrong baby home.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
My mouth went dry.
“And you believe him?”
“I did.”
“Did?”
Ethan looked at Owen.
“Until someone started following me three months ago.”
“Who?”
“No idea. Same gray sedan you probably saw tonight.”
That got my attention.
He reached into his jacket again and removed a tiny radio-frequency detector, the kind sold online to people convinced hotels were spying on them.
“You told me you’d know if I brought the burner.”
“This lights up when certain cheap transmitters are nearby. Whoever gave Lenora that phone modified it.”
“Modified how?”
“Microphone stays active when the screen is off. Location pings every ninety seconds.”
“You checked it?”
“I checked one exactly like it.”
He pulled another black phone from his pocket.
Same model.
Same scratches near the charging port.
“When did you get that?” I asked.
“Last week. It was left in my truck with a note telling me to keep watching Lenora.”
My pulse sped up.
“You’ve been receiving messages too?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”
“That she stole my life. That she knows what happened to my mother. That if I want the truth, I need to make sure she follows instructions.”
“Instructions involving my son.”
His eyes hardened.
“I never agreed to hurt your son.”
“That is not a comforting sentence.”
“I didn’t know there was a baby involved until three weeks ago.”
“Owen is nineteen days old.”
“I know.”
I stared at him.
He realized what I meant.
“Exactly,” he said. “They knew before he was born.”
A waitress approached with coffee. Neither of us had ordered it. She looked between us, decided not to ask, and walked away.
I lowered my voice.
“What did they tell you to do tonight?”
“Come here.”
“That’s all?”
“And give you this.”
He removed a small brass key from his pocket.
The number 317 was stamped on the head.
My skin prickled.
“What does it open?”
“A locker at the old North Station bus terminal.”
“That place has been closed for years.”
“The lower level hasn’t been demolished.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I already went.”
I stared.
“And?”
“There was nothing in the locker except a photograph.”
He slid it toward me.
The photograph showed my mother sitting on a narrow hospital bed, younger by three decades, exhausted, hair damp against her face.
In her arms were two newborn babies.
I stopped breathing.
Two.
The back of the photo carried a handwritten note.
LENORA — MARCH 14, 1992 — B-16 / B-17
I looked at Ethan.
“You said your mother was Elise.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Then why is my mother holding two babies?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Owen made a soft sound from the car seat.
Both of us looked down at him.
For one strange second, Ethan’s face broke open with something almost tender.
Then the diner’s front window exploded.
Glass flew across the room.
The waitress screamed.
I threw myself over Owen’s car seat.
A second shot punched into the wall behind Ethan.
“Down!” he shouted.
We hit the floor.
People were screaming now. Chairs scraped. Someone ran toward the kitchen.
Ethan crawled beside me.
“Back exit.”
I grabbed the car seat.
We moved low between booths while another shot shattered the pie display.
At the kitchen door, the waitress held it open with both hands, crying.
“Go!”
We ran through the kitchen into the alley.
Cold rain slapped my face.
Ethan pointed to a black pickup.
“Mine!”
“No.”
“Your car is exposed.”
He was right.
I hated that he was right.
I climbed into the passenger side with Owen on my lap while Ethan drove.
As we tore out of the alley, a gray sedan pulled from behind the bowling alley and followed.
Ethan looked in the mirror.
“Still think Lenora is the only one you should be afraid of?”
My phone rang.
My mother.
I answered.
“Daniel?”
Her voice shook.
“Mom, get out of the house. Now.”
“It’s too late.”
“What?”
I heard a crash behind her.
Then a man’s voice.
Calm.
Educated.
Close to the phone.
“Bring Ethan to St. Agnes,” he said. “And bring the child.”
I gripped the dashboard.
“Who is this?”
The man laughed softly.
May you like
Then my mother screamed.
The line went dead.
