Homeless At 22, He Found An Abandoned $20 Farm Deep In The Pines – Then Everything Changed
Chapter 10
Ethan spent the night unable to sleep.
He kept staring at the photograph.
A baby.
A young James Carter.
The farmhouse behind them.
His father had been here.
Not a stranger.
Not a story.
Here.
Victor gave him the rest of the truth.
James had fallen in love with Ethan’s mother, Claire Cole, when they were young.
Charles Morgan hated the relationship because Claire’s family had financial ties to a competing company.
When James discovered the mineral deposit, Charles wanted control.
James refused.
Then Claire became pregnant.
James planned to leave Pine Hollow with her.
They never got the chance.
Charles threatened James.
Then James vanished.
Claire raised Ethan alone.
She told him his father was gone.
Victor had been ordered to disappear too.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I tried.”
“What stopped you?”
“Fear.”
Ethan looked at him.
“That fear cost me twenty-two years.”
Victor lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
The next morning, Ethan visited his mother.
Claire lived in a small town two hours away.
When Ethan showed her the photograph, she started crying.
“You found him.”
“My father?”
She nodded.
“I thought he was dead.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every person who knew the truth disappeared.”
She wiped her eyes.
“I was afraid I’d lose you too.”
Ethan finally understood.
His mother hadn’t hidden the truth because she didn’t love him.
She had hidden it because she did.
Before he left, Claire gave him an old wooden box.
Inside was a letter.
James’s handwriting.
“I don’t know what will happen to me.”
“But if my son ever finds this, I want him to know one thing.”
“I never abandoned him.”
Ethan had to stop reading.
He pressed the letter against his chest.
For twenty-two years, he had carried the belief that nobody had chosen him.
Now he knew someone had spent his final days trying to protect him.
When Ethan returned to the farm, Victor was waiting.
“There is one more thing.”
“What?”
“James may not have died.”
Ethan stared.
“What?”
“We found blood at the site where he disappeared, but no body.”
“Then where is he?”
Victor shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Ethan’s heart raced.
The possibility was almost impossible to accept.
His father could have survived.
Maybe James had escaped.
Maybe someone had hidden him.
Then another clue emerged.
In the journal, Ethan found a line he had overlooked.
“If I disappear, look beneath the old mill.”
The mill stood three miles outside Pine Hollow.
Abandoned.
Rotting.
Almost forgotten.
Ethan looked at Victor.
“We’re going.”
Victor nodded.
This time, they wouldn’t run.
