My throat tightened. “I miss you.”
Then a voice came from behind me.
My whole body locked.
I turned, and my heart jumped into my throat.
A woman stood there in a coat and scarf, hands clasped tight.
Her face looked like my mom’s face. Same eyes. Same cheekbones.
Same lavender smell.
“Mom?” I whispered.
Her expression cracked. “No, honey.”
“Then why do you look like her?” I demanded. “Who are you?”
She looked at the headstone.
Then at me.
“I’m Nadine,” she said. “I’m your mom’s mother.”
I backed up. “That’s not true.
Dale said she had no family.”
Nadine’s jaw set. “Dale said what helped Dale.”
She pulled a photo from her purse and held it out like I might bite her.
I took it.
My mom sat on a couch, younger, holding a baby wrapped in a blanket.
Me.
My hands started shaking.
“I have boxes,” Nadine said. “Cards.
Letters. Gifts. I tried to send them.”
“I never got anything,” I said.
“I know.” Her voice went sharp.
“Because they didn’t reach you.”
I stared at the photo until it blurred.
“I come here every week,” Nadine said. “I’ve been hoping you’d show up.”
“Why?” My voice cracked.
“Because Dale made sure I couldn’t find you anywhere else,” she said. “And because this was the only place I knew you might come.”
She studied my face.
“Are you safe with him?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
Nadine nodded like she’d heard me anyway.
She reached for my hand. I flinched.
She stopped.
“Okay,” she said quickly. “No touching.”
Then she said, steady, “You’re coming with me.”
I should’ve run. I didn’t.
She felt like a doorway to something new.
So I nodded.
“Okay.”
Her car smelled like peppermint and clean laundry. I sat stiff, ready to bolt.
“You can tell me to stop,” Nadine said.
I didn’t say anything. I was tense, but I was willing to take a risk.
Her house was small and lived-in.
Wind chimes on the porch. Inside, a man stepped into the hall, tall and tense.
“Oh,” he said, staring at me. “Hi.”
Nadine said, “Wyatt, this is Corbin.”
Corbin smiled tentatively.
“I’m your uncle.”
I stared at him. “I don’t have—”
“I know,” he cut in. “You’ve been told that.
But we’re here.”
Nadine asked, “Hot chocolate?”
I almost said no out of habit. I always had to stay out of the way
Corbin said, “You’re more than welcome to a cup.”
I nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
While Corbin poured the cocoa, he opened a closet and dragged out a plastic bin.
He set it on the coffee table and flipped the lid.
Envelopes. Stacks of them. Some stamped.
Some returned to sender. Some unopened.
Nadine tapped the top one. “That’s your 10 birthday,” she said.
“I wrote ‘Please give to Wyatt’ in big letters.”
I stared at my name in her handwriting like it was a trick.
Corbin slid another envelope forward. “That’s the one we sent after your mom’s funeral,” he said. “We begged him to let us see you.”
I swallowed.
“He told me nobody asked.”
Nadine’s eyes hardened. “He lied.”
I set the photo down and pressed my palms to my knees so they wouldn’t shake.
“What if he calls the cops?” I asked. “What if he says you kidnapped me?”
Corbin leaned in.
“Then we tell them the truth,” he said. “And we show them this bin.”
Nadine sat across from me. “Tell us about Dale,” she said.
My stomach flipped.
If I said it out loud, it would be real.
“He yells,” I said.
Corbin’s voice was careful. “Does he hurt you?”
I hesitated.
Nadine said, “Whatever you say, we’re not sending you back.”
That made my eyes burn.
“He grabs me,” I admitted. “My wrist.
My arm. When he’s mad. Or when people are over.”
“Has he hit you?” Corbin asked.
I shook my head.
Then I said, “No. But he yells a lot.”
Silence.
Nadine pressed her lips together so hard they went white.
Corbin stared at the floor like he was holding something back.
Nadine exhaled. “We tried to reach you,” she said.
“Dale blocked everything. Threatened legal action. Called us unstable.”
“He can’t do that,” I said, too fast.
“He did,” Corbin said.
“He had papers. He wanted you cut off.”
My chest tightened. “Why?”
Nadine’s eyes glistened.
“Because he was overwhelmed after your mom died. She was always the strong one.”
She stood.
Panic hit me. “He’ll—”
“He’ll charm,” Corbin said.
“Let him. We won’t be alone with him.”
A cruiser met us down the street from Dale’s house. The officer listened, then turned to me.
“Wyatt,” she said, “do you want to leave that house today?”
My throat felt glued shut.
I nodded.
We walked up to the door. The officer knocked.
Dale opened it with his smile ready.
Then he saw me.
His smile twitched. His eyes went cold.
Then he noticed Nadine, Corbin, and the officer, and his mask snapped back on.
“Well,” he said, bright, “what’s going on?”
“Sir,” the officer said, “we’re removing the minor during an investigation.”
Dale laughed. “This is ridiculous. He’s upset because I have rules.”
The officer didn’t laugh.
Dale tried again, softer.
“Officer, you don’t understand. He’s dramatic. He gets it from his mother.”
Nadine’s head snapped up.
“Don’t talk about her,” she said.
Dale’s smile tightened. “I’m just telling the truth.”
Corbin stepped forward. “You don’t own him.”
Dale’s jaw flexed.
“And you are?”
Nadine didn’t blink. “Nadine.”
Fear flashed across Dale’s face. He covered it with a smile.
“I don’t know who you people are,” he said.
“But you can’t take my kid.”
Nadine’s voice stayed calm. “You stole 11 years. You don’t get one more day.”
Dale looked at me like he could still scare me into staying.
The officer stepped between us.
“Wyatt, grab what you need.”
I went to my room with the officer behind me. I grabbed a hoodie, my charger, and my mom’s bracelet from my drawer.
My fingers shook so hard I dropped the bracelet once.
When I came back, Dale leaned close and muttered, “You’re making a mistake.”
I walked past him without answering.
At Nadine’s, the first night I didn’t sleep. The bed was too soft.
The quiet was too quiet. I kept waiting for footsteps to stop outside my door.
In the morning, Nadine didn’t ask me to act normal. She just set cereal on the table and said, “Eat if you can.”
Corbin sat down across from me.
“You can lock your door,” he said, pointing to the knob. “If it helps.”
I stared. “You’re… okay with that?”
He nodded.
“Whatever makes you feel safe.”
Days blurred into questions and paperwork. A counselor asked me what I liked. I didn’t know how to answer at first.
Nobody had asked me that in a long time.
A social worker explained court stuff like I was supposed to understand it. I nodded anyway.
All I cared about was that I woke up feeling safe.
Two weeks later, an envelope showed up.
Nadine held it at the counter, face tight. “It’s from Dale’s lawyer.”
My stomach dropped.
Corbin read it and swore.
Then Nadine handed it to me.
That was all it said.
My hands went cold.
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
Nadine looked at the floor. Corbin looked away.
Nadine said, “Your mom was afraid of Dale.”
“So was I,” I snapped.
Nadine’s eyes lifted to mine. “Not like this,” she said.
“She told me things before she died. She begged me to watch Dale.”
Corbin stood. “We’re going to the cemetery.”
“Now?” I asked.
“Now,” Nadine said.
We drove there in silence.
The oak tree stood over my mom’s grave like a guard.
Nadine crouched and pulled an old envelope from her coat pocket. Yellowed. Soft at the edges.
My mom’s handwriting on the front.
Wyatt.
My throat closed.
Nadine held it out. “Your mom made me promise I wouldn’t give you this until you were old enough.”
“How would she know when?” I asked.
Nadine’s voice shook. “She said I’d know.
Because Dale would be scared.”
I took it. My hands trembled as I opened it.
Inside was one line, underlined twice.
“If Dale ever comes back scared, it means you’re finally old enough to know the truth.”
My mouth went dry.
I looked up at Nadine. “What truth?”
Nadine stared at the headstone and started crying.
Corbin’s fists clenched so tight his knuckles went white.
And I understood why Dale’s face had changed when he saw her.
My mom’s story didn’t end the way I’d been told.
Dale wasn’t scared because he was being inconvenienced.
He was scared because he knew what the truth could do.
I stood under that oak tree with my mom’s letter in my hand, and I realized the scariest part wasn’t Dale coming after me.
It was that my mom had been trying to warn me from the grave.
I didn’t ask more right then. I couldn’t. I folded the note and held it to my chest.
I was safe from Dale, and he knew exactly why.
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