Years passed, but the memory never left Ethan.
By the time he turned twenty-four, he was a thin, quiet young man working in a bookstore. He lived simply, but the same words haunted him.
One night, his coworker Grace noticed the dark circles under his eyes. “You look like you haven’t slept in days,” she said.
“I dream of her again,” Ethan admitted softly. “Not a dream—my mother.”
For years, he had quietly gathered scraps of evidence: missing-person reports, town records, old newspapers. A name surfaced repeatedly—Helen Moore, a young maid hired by Daniel Ward two decades earlier.
Helen had vanished suddenly in 2004. Witnesses last saw her in a blue dress.
No body was ever found.
