«If this is true, why didn’t anyone find me sooner?»
«Vernon was smart,» Winston explained. «He changed your name immediately and moved to a small town where no one asked questions. You were young enough that your memories faded. It wasn’t until Robert Henley’s widow contacted us last month that we finally had a real lead.»
Patricia appeared in the church doorway, looking for stragglers. Our eyes met across the sanctuary. For the first time in my life, I saw fear flicker across her face. She knew exactly who Winston was, she knew why he was here, and she knew her thirty-year performance as a charitable Christian woman was about to end. «We need proof,» I told Winston, though my heart already knew the truth. «DNA proof.»
«Already arranged,» he said. «But Christopher, we need to move carefully. Patricia is dangerous. If she realizes we know, she might run or destroy evidence.»
I couldn’t sleep that night. Winston had given me a burner phone and told me to act normal until the DNA test results came back. «Don’t confront Patricia,» he’d warned. «Don’t change your routine. We need solid evidence before we move.» But how do you act normal when your entire life has been revealed as a lie? I lay in my apartment above Hazel’s Diner, staring at the water-stained ceiling, replaying thirty years of memories with new understanding.
The way Vernon always paid me in cash for ranch work, never a check. The way Patricia burned all the old documents in a bonfire when I was ten, claiming they were «decluttering.» The way they never let me get a passport when the school offered a trip to Canada. At five a.m., I gave up on sleep and went to work early. Sherman Brennan was already there, inventory clipboard in hand.
«You look like hell, son,» he said, studying my face. «Everything all right?»
«Vernon’s funeral was yesterday,» I said, which was true, but not the truth.
Sherman nodded slowly. «Can’t say I’ll miss him. The man never had a kind word for you in all the years I knew him. You’re better off without that family, Dennis.» If only he knew.
Winston called that afternoon while I was stocking paint cans. «Can you meet me at the Riverside Motel tonight? Room 12. We need to collect the DNA sample and discuss next steps.»
The motel was twenty miles outside town, chosen specifically so no one from Copper Ridge would see us. Winston had set up a mobile command center in his room. «Your case never went cold for the FBI,» he explained while swabbing my cheek for DNA. «Every year on your birthday, your mother would call them, begging for updates. She hired me fifteen years ago when the FBI essentially gave up.»
He showed me more photos. Christopher Thorn’s fifth birthday party, two weeks before the kidnapping. I was opening presents surrounded by other children, my parents crouching beside me with faces glowing with joy. There was a video, too, though Winston warned me before playing it. «This might be hard to watch.»
My mother’s voice filled the room. «Christopher, tell Daddy what you want to be when you grow up.»
The little boy on screen, the boy who was me, jumped up and down. «A superhero! I save people!» My throat closed. Somewhere in my mind, that memory existed, buried under thirty years of Vernon telling me I was worthless.
«The DNA results will take three days,» Winston said. «In the meantime, I need you to think. Do you remember anything from before?»
I closed my eyes. «Red rain boots. I remember red rain boots that I loved, and a woman singing something about mockingbirds.»
Winston’s eyes lit up. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through photos. «These boots?» The picture showed the same red boots I’d dreamed about. They were sitting in an evidence bag labeled «Christopher Thorn, items worn, day of disappearance.» «Your mother sang you that song every night,» he said softly. «She mentioned it in every interview she gave, hoping it might trigger your memory if you heard it.»
The next three days passed in surreal slow motion. I went to work, smiled at customers, and ate lunch at the diner like always, but Patricia started acting strange. She came into the hardware store twice, something she’d never done in the five years I’d worked there. «Dennis,» she said during her second visit, «I’ve been thinking. With Vernon gone, perhaps it’s time we acted more like a proper family. Would you come to dinner Sunday?»
In thirty years, she’d never once invited me to Sunday dinner. «I’m busy,» I said, turning back to my work.
Her voice turned cold. «You know, I found some old papers in Vernon’s office. Adoption papers. It would be a shame if something happened to them.» It was a threat. She knew something was happening. That night, I called Winston.
«She’s getting suspicious. She mentioned destroying documents.»
«The DNA results came back early,» Winston said. «A 99.97% match with Eleanor Thorn. You’re definitely Christopher. The FBI is moving in tomorrow morning.»
I sat down hard on my secondhand couch. «There’s something else,» Winston continued. «Your mother wants to speak with you. She’s been waiting by the phone since I told her we might have found you. Are you ready for that?»
Was I ready to speak to a stranger who was my mother? To hear the voice of the woman who’d been searching for me while I was scrubbing floors? «Put her on,» I said.
The voice that came through the phone was soft, broken, and hopeful. «Christopher? Is it really you?»
«I don’t know how to answer that,» I said honestly. «I’ve been Dennis for so long.»
«That’s okay,» she said, and I could hear tears in her voice. «You can be whoever you need to be. I just need to know you’re safe. Are you safe?»
«I am, now.»
«The FBI says I can’t see you until after tomorrow. But Christopher, I need you to know something. Every single day for thirty years, I’ve loved you. Every birthday, I baked a cake. Every Christmas, I wrapped presents. You were never forgotten. You were never replaced. You were always my baby boy.»
I broke then, thirty years of suppressed emotion flooding out. This stranger loved me more than the people who’d raised me ever had.
The FBI arrived at dawn, six black SUVs rolling into Copper Ridge like an invading army. I watched from my apartment window as they surrounded the Rayfield ranch. Patricia was in her kitchen making coffee when they knocked, probably planning another day of playing the grieving widow. Within minutes, she was in handcuffs.
Winston picked me up an hour later. «She’s not talking yet, but she will. The evidence is overwhelming.» At the sheriff’s station, I stood behind one-way glass watching Patricia in the interrogation room. She looked smaller without her church dress and perfect posture, just a seventy-year-old woman facing the consequences of her lies.
The FBI agent, a woman named Agent Chen, laid out the evidence methodically: DNA results, financial records showing Vernon’s mysterious cash windfall in 1994, and testimony from Robert Henley’s widow. Phone records showed Vernon had called the Thorn residence twelve times in the weeks before the kidnapping. Patricia stayed silent for three hours. Then Agent Chen played the video of my fifth birthday party, and something in Patricia’s face cracked.
