Chapter 3

Later, at the scene, Dad and Mom talked.

Agent Jack Riley, Dad' s partner, a man who' d known me since I was small, before I got "lost," stood with them.

Riley looked uneasy. He always looked a bit uneasy around my parents when I was the topic.

"David, Sarah, with something this vicious, you need to be careful. Think about your boys," Riley said, his voice low.

Mom scoffed. That sound. I knew that sound. It usually came before something dismissive about me.

"Kyle is sensible. He knows how to take care of himself," she said.

Then she paused. "Ethan? Who knows where that boy gets off to. Probably sulking somewhere because he had to miss Kyle' s triumph."

Dad nodded, his face a mask of frustration.

"He didn' t even show up for Kyle's debate. After all we do. Ungrateful. That boy is a lost cause, Sarah, a lost cause."

A lost cause. That' s what I was to him.

Riley shifted his weight. "He' s still your son, David. Your biological son."

A flicker of something in Dad' s eyes. Annoyance? Or something else, buried deep?

"He 'disappeared' for three days last spring, remember?" Dad said, his voice hard. "Right before Kyle' s regionals. Caused a huge scene. We thought he' d run off again."

He didn't know. Kyle had locked me in the old sports equipment storage room at school. It was a long holiday weekend. No one heard me.

When they found me, dehydrated and terrified, Kyle had already spun his story about how I was "acting out" to ruin his focus.

They believed Kyle. They always believed Kyle.

Mom was doing a preliminary sweep of the body, still at the scene.

Her gloved finger traced something on my back.

Old scars. Faded, silvery lines against my skin.

From Mr. Henderson' s belt, in that foster home when I was twelve. He didn' t like quiet kids.

"Old injuries," Mom noted to her assistant. "Not recent. Probably from before... well, irrelevant to current COD."

Irrelevant. Like me.

Her assistant, a young guy, looked pale. "Anything else, Dr. Miller?"

"Bag everything. Let' s get him to the morgue. I want to know who this kid was."

If only she knew. If only she cared enough to truly look.

An officer approached them. "We found something else, might be from the victim. Looks like a piece of paper, partially digested, in the initial debris sifted from the body cavity."

Mom nodded. "Bag it. Send it to the lab. Maybe we can get something from it."

A piece of paper. I remembered. A receipt. For them.