Searching for a Ghost
Lucas took leave from work.
He searched everything—hospital records, accident reports, shelters, halfway homes.
Days blurred together.
Then the truth finally surfaced.
Ryan Reed had been admitted to a hospital in San Diego three years earlier after a motorcycle accident.
A nurse remembered him instantly.
“He was unconscious for weeks,” she said. “When he woke up, he didn’t recognize anyone. A woman came every day. Pregnant. Crying. She begged us not to give up on him.”
Elena.
Lucas drove north again, his thoughts racing faster than the road beneath him.
When he returned to the residence, Mason spotted him immediately and ran straight into his arms.
“Ms. Harper says you knew my dad,” the boy said proudly.
“Yes,” Lucas replied, holding him tight. “We were very close.”
Mason tilted his head.
“Then why doesn’t he come?”
Lucas knelt so they were eye to eye.
“I’m trying to find him.”
Mason smiled, as if that answer was enough.
“Good things take time,” he said seriously. “But they come.”
As Lucas stood to leave, Mason tugged gently at his sleeve.
“When you find him,” the boy said, “tell him I still remember our song.”
And he sang it.
The lullaby Lucas and Ryan had made up as kids—nonsense words, soft rhythm, a promise hidden inside it.
Even broken memory hadn’t erased that.
