The next morning, we drove nearly four hours.
Andrea — Ryan’s ex-wife — answered the door.
The second she saw me, all color drained from her face.
She tried closing the door immediately.
I stopped it with my hand and held up Lily’s phone.
“Watch this.”
She barely made it halfway through the video before tears overtook her.
When it ended, she silently stepped aside and let us enter.
The walls inside told the rest of the story before she even spoke.
Photographs.
Ryan smiling.
Andrea beside him.
Jack and Caleb alive, older, growing up.
I thought my knees might give out beneath me.
I stared at her in disbelief.
“I raised those boys as my sons. What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Andrea broke down crying.
Not fake tears.
Not defensive tears.
The kind born from guilt carried for far too long.
“You did nothing wrong, Anna.”
Then she asked us to follow her somewhere.
She led us to a cemetery at the edge of town.
And there, carved into stone, was Ryan’s name.
Ryan
