Chapter 3 - TWO BROTHERS WHO BOTH THOUGHT THEY’D BEEN ABANDONED
Peter barely slept.
At seven the next morning he sat in his truck outside the hospital, scrolling through nearly two years of old messages.
His texts to Mark were still there.
Happy birthday, idiot. Call me.
Drew’s school picture came out great. Tell him Uncle Pete wants one.
I’m done fighting about Reena. I just want my brother back.
The messages showed as delivered.
None had replies.
Peter had eventually stopped sending them.
Not because he stopped caring.
Because unanswered love becomes humiliating after a while.
His mother, Ellen, arrived at the hospital with coffee and swollen eyes.
She was sixty-eight, widowed, and had spent five months defending Reena because defending Mark’s widow had felt like defending Mark.
Peter showed her the messages.
Ellen frowned.
“She told me you blocked him.”
“I didn’t.”
“She showed me something.”
“What?”
“A message. Mark said you wouldn’t answer him anymore.”
Peter stared at her.
“From Mark?”
“I assumed.”
That word mattered.
Assumed.
By noon, Drew had a temporary cast and orders for orthopedic follow-up. Lily had stopped hiding food only after a nurse promised there would be more.
CPS would not allow either child to return home with Reena that day.
That did not mean Peter automatically got them.
His house needed a safety inspection. He needed a background check. The agency needed to verify that he could manage two young children, one injured, while working full-time as a commercial HVAC technician.
Reena used the delay against him.
In the hallway she leaned close enough that only he could hear.
“You always wanted Mark to think I was the problem.”
Peter stepped away.
“I want to know why a six-year-old crawled seven blocks to my house.”
“He ran away.”
“With a broken leg?”
Her jaw tightened.
Then she said something strange.
“You should’ve stayed out of it like Mark asked.”
Peter looked at her.
Mark had supposedly asked him to stay away through messages Peter had never received.
That afternoon Peter called Mark’s former supervisor, Caleb Monroe.
He expected awkward condolences.
Instead Caleb went quiet when Peter explained why he was calling.
“Pete,” he finally said, “Mark thought you cut him off.”
Peter gripped the steering wheel.
“What?”
“He complained about it constantly. Said you wouldn’t answer calls. Wouldn’t answer texts.”
Peter closed his eyes.
Caleb continued.
“The weird thing was, toward the end, he stopped sounding angry.”
“What did he sound like?”
“Confused.”
Peter opened his eyes.
May you like
Caleb hesitated before adding the sentence that changed what Peter did next.
“About three weeks before he died, Mark asked me whether a person could somehow be stopping messages between two phones without either person knowing.”
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