Ethan didn’t move.

The world around Volunteer Park kept going—distant laughter, leaves shifting in the wind, the soft patter of rain beginning to fall—but everything inside him had gone still.

“Noah Reed,” he repeated under his breath, as if saying it again might make it less real.

The boy flinched at his voice.

Oliver, still kneeling beside him, reached out carefully. “Hi, Noah. I’m Oliver. I knew you were my brother.”

“No, I’m not,” Noah muttered instantly, pulling his knees closer to his chest. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

But his voice shook.

Ethan crouched slowly, trying not to scare him. “Where are your parents?”

A long silence.

Then Noah looked away. “Don’t have any.”

Something in Ethan’s chest tightened.

That surname—Reed—was not a coincidence. Clara Reed. The woman who had vanished ten years ago without explanation, leaving behind nothing but unanswered questions and a silence Ethan had never fully accepted.

Now, somehow, that silence was sitting under a lamppost in a wet sweatshirt and bare feet.

A man approached from the path behind them. Park security.

“Sir, is everything alright here?”

Ethan didn’t look away from the boy. “Yes. I need help finding out where this child came from.”

But Noah suddenly stood up.

“I don’t need help,” he said quickly, backing away. “I’m fine. I can go.”

Oliver grabbed his sleeve.

“Noah, wait!”

And for a second—just a second—Noah didn’t pull away.

That was enough for Ethan.

Because whatever truth this was…

it wasn’t finished yet.