“Amy!” He cried out, his voice hoarse with
desperation. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have
believed Sarah. After you left, I found out
Jason isn’t even my son. He’s the child of an
affair. And she wasn’t in danger in the ocean.
I… I killed Ethan.”
I whirled around, disgust twisting my features.
“Enough with the act, Mark!”
“What good is your repentance now?! Ethan
く
trusted you. He loved you. And you let him
drown! You killed him! You don’t deserve to
be called his father!”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. After what
you did to Ethan, after letting Sarah and
Jason desecrate his funeral with their red
clothes, after… after everything… we’re
done.”
“If you’re truly sorry, go tell Ethan yourself.”
I turned and walked away, not looking back.
Ellie told me later that he’d stood there all
night, staring towards our building.
く
“What’s your story with that guy?” she’d
asked.
I just shook my head. “We’re strangers.”
What else could we be, after all that pain?
The next morning, Ellie burst in, her face pale. “Amy… your ‘stranger‘ is dead.”
Mark was dead. He’d drowned by the shore.
But the water was shallow there. There was
no way he could have accidentally drowned.
<
The others said he must have been
desperate, to drown himself like that.
I didn’t react, continuing my work recovering
debris from the seabed.
Until one day, I pulled up a small skeleton, a
child’s skeleton. Beside it lay a tiny, gleaming
gold locket.
Engraved on the back were the initials: EJL
Ethan James Lewis.
My Ethan.
Finally, Mommy could take you home.
