You don’t have to know tonight.”

He nodded.

Then I asked him the question that had lived inside me since the day he disappeared.

“Did you think I stopped looking?”

He stared at the bottle for a long moment.

Then he said, “No.”

I started crying again.

He looked at me and said, “I think part of me knew that. I think that’s why I survived it.”

That broke me more than anything else.

I did not get his lost childhood back.

I did not get his first shave, his graduation, his wedding, or the day his son was born.

None of those things can ever be returned.

But that night, I stood inside my son’s kitchen while my grandson pressed a dinosaur sticker into my hand and asked if I liked green.

I told him yes.

Daniel stood near the counter, exhausted and stunned.

And alive.

“I don’t know how to be your son,” he said.

“You already are.”

After all those years, Route 9 finally gave something back.