The brochure remained untouched on the desk, but Susan couldn’t take her eyes off it.
The phone booth smelled of rain and other people’s conversations. Alex dialed the number for Andrew Peterson, a detective who specialized in archival research. His first PI was good with the present, but the past required a different set of skills.
“I need all the information you can find on a Susan Morgan for the year 2004,” he said into the receiver. “Before she changed her last name to Krasnov. Bank records, medical files, any official documents.”
The direct hints weren’t working. His mother had either truly forgotten them or had become so adept at hiding her emotions that not even childhood photos could break through her armor. But something had forced her to change her identity and leave her children twenty years ago. And Alex was determined to find out the truth, no matter how terrible it might be.
“Pay special attention to February and March,” he added. “What was going on in her life right before she disappeared.”
The detective’s calm, businesslike voice came through the line, promising results in a week. Alex hung up and stepped out into the rain. The drops drummed on the roof of the phone booth like a nervous person’s fingers on a table. In a week, he would know the truth about the day their world fell apart. And then he would know whether to continue this game or to let the past go forever. The rain intensified, turning the city into a blurry watercolor. Alex walked to his car, oblivious to his expensive suit getting soaked. One question spun in his mind: what if the truth was worse than anything he had imagined all these years?
The folder landed on the table with a dull thud, like a judge’s gavel delivering a sentence. Andrew Peterson, a thin man in glasses, opened it slowly, as if unsealing an ancient tomb.
“Susan Morgan,” he said, sorting through the documents. “2004. It was a hard year for your mother.”
Alex leaned forward, his heart beating so loudly he thought it could be heard in the next booth of the diner.
“In January, she took out her first loan,” the detective said, placing a bank statement in front of him. “Fifty thousand dollars, against the house. Her husband’s diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, stage four.”
Alex picked up the paper with trembling fingers. For 2004, it was a staggering amount of money.
“Then a second loan, a third…” Mr. Peterson laid out the statements one by one, like cards in a game of solitaire. “Experimental treatment in Germany. She spent over a hundred thousand dollars in total.”
“And it didn’t work?” Alex whispered.
“Stephen Morgan passed away eight months later,” the detective said, shaking his head. “He left his wife with two small children and a debt of nearly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Alex leaned back in his chair, trying to process the information. His mother had fought for his father’s life until the very end. She had spent everything she had, and more. Outside the diner window, snow was falling, blanketing the city in a white shroud of forgetting.
The audio recorder on the table looked like a small black snake. Mr. Peterson pressed play, and a rough male voice filled the silence:
“Listen, Susie, you think the Callahans are just going to forgive this debt? These are serious people!”
Alex flinched. He remembered hearing that name whispered with fear in his childhood.
“The Callahan brothers,” the detective explained. “Loan sharks. They fronted her money for the treatment at a high interest rate. When your mother couldn’t pay, the threats started.”
The recording continued. A second, harsher voice:
“If you can’t pay with money, you’ll pay with the kids. We’ve got buyers. Good families overseas.”
A cold dread washed over Alex.
“The kids… like property? Like something you can just sell?”
“The plan was to forge adoption papers,” Mr. Peterson explained, turning off the recorder. “Then traffic the children out of the country. There was good money in Europe for healthy American kids.”
“So, she…” Alex couldn’t finish the sentence.
“She was saving you,” the detective nodded. “From human traffickers.”
The coffee in his cup was long cold, but Alex didn’t notice. One thought consumed him: his mother hadn’t abandoned them. She had saved them.
The timeline of events had been reconstructed from documents with hour-by-hour precision. Mr. Peterson laid out the papers in chronological order, like stills from a horror movie.
“Eight a.m.,” he said, pointing to the first document. “The collectors showed up at your mother’s house. Neighbors heard shouting, children crying.”
Alex pictured the scene. Little Maria crying in her crib, and him, a three-year-old, hiding behind his mother’s skirt.
“The ultimatum was 24 hours. ‘The money or the kids.’” The detective turned the page. “Susan realized she had no time to find the money. The group home was the only protection she had.”
“Protection?” Alex asked, confused.
“State custody, paperwork, oversight,” Mr. Peterson explained. “The collectors couldn’t just walk into a state facility and take two children. Too many witnesses, too much red tape.”
The intake form from the children’s home was dated at 2 p.m. “Unable to provide for them,” the director had written, quoting his mother. That same afternoon, she went to the DMV; the detective showed him the stamp on her application for a new ID with a new name. By 6 p.m., she was on a bus to another state.
“She vanished,” Alex whispered.
“She was saving her own life,” the detective corrected him. “So that one day, she could come back for you.”
Her employment records told a story better than any novel. Alex flipped through the pages, seeing how his mother had survived those three years.
“Columbus, Ohio,” Mr. Peterson read. “Worked as a cleaner in an office building. Lived in a shared apartment under the name Susan Krasnov. Then a cashier at a grocery store. Then a bank teller at a small branch. Your mother clawed her way back, rebuilding her life piece by piece. She followed the news about the Callahan brothers,” the detective showed him printouts from the internet. “She was waiting for them to be arrested.”
“And were they?” Alex asked.
“In 2007. They were caught in a human trafficking sting.” Mr. Peterson nodded. “Only then did your mother return to her home state.”
The document reinstating her residency was dated August 2007.
“The first thing she did was go to the children’s home,” the detective continued. “But it was too late. You had already been adopted. The administration refused to give her any information, citing confidentiality laws.”
Alex pictured his mother standing in front of the same gates where he had recently sat crying in his car. Only she was looking for them, and all she found was an empty space.
The ad agency was buzzing like a beehive: phones ringing, meetings in progress, keyboards clacking. Maria sat at her computer in a glass-walled office, working on a layout for a baby food ad. The irony was not lost on him.
“Alex?” She looked up and saw her brother in the doorway. “Is something wrong?”
Alex walked in, closed the door behind him, and placed the folder of documents on her desk.
“I found out the truth,” he said simply.
For the next hour, he talked, and Maria listened, her face growing paler with every word. He showed her the loan statements, the transcripts of the threats, the timeline of that day in March. With each document, she looked more and more lost.
“Are you telling me she… saved us?” Maria whispered when he had finished.
“Yes,” Alex nodded. “From traffickers. The group home was the only safe place.”
Maria was silent for a long time, processing everything. Outside the glass walls of her office, life went on as usual, but in here, time seemed to have stopped.
“So I’ve spent all this time hating her for nothing?”
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