TOWARD THE DISTANCE Chapter 18

Cade's parents arrived the same afternoon.

The house looked exactly as it always had — spotless, beautifully arranged, every surface polished, every flower freshly cut. Elena's systems were still running. The housekeepers followed the schedules she had set up months ago, maintaining a home whose owner no longer existed.

Cade's mother intercepted one of the staff near the kitchen. "Where is my son? Why won't he come out?"

The housekeeper pointed upstairs, her face drawn tight with worry. "He's been in the bedroom for days, Mrs. Harrington. He won't let us in. He won't eat. He won't talk to anyone."

Cade's mother climbed the stairs, her husband close behind her. The bedroom door wasn't locked — just closed, the way someone might close it to be left alone, not to keep people out.

They pushed it open.

The floor was covered in paper. Hundreds of sheets, maybe thousands, scattered across every inch of carpet like fallen leaves. Cade sat cross-legged in the middle of it all, hunched over a notebook, writing furiously. His hair was unwashed, his clothes wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot and ringed with dark circles.

On every single sheet of paper, in his handwriting — sometimes neat, sometimes shaking, sometimes barely legible — the same words repeated over and over:

Elena. I'm sorry.

Elena. I'm sorry.

Elena. I'm sorry.

Cade's mother covered her mouth with both hands.

His father knelt down and picked up a handful of the pages, scanning them. Every one. The same sentence, written hundreds of times, as if repetition could somehow reach a woman on the other side of the world.

"What are you doing?" his father asked, his voice rough.

Cade didn't look up. His pen kept moving. "I'm writing to her. She'll see it eventually. She has to."

"Son —"

"If I write enough of them, she'll know I mean it. She'll know I've changed." His voice was hoarse, almost feverish. "I just need to finish. I need to write them all —"

Cade's mother sank to her knees beside him, tears streaming down her face. "Elena doesn't want to see you. Writing these won't reach her —"

"She will see them," Cade said, with the kind of certainty that frightened her. "I just have to keep going."

His father tried to take the notebook away. Cade held on with both hands, his knuckles white.

"Let go of this," his father said sharply. "You're killing yourself over a piece of paper."

"It's not just paper —"

"Then what is it?" His father's voice cracked. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like my son is losing his mind."

Cade finally looked up. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, burning with something that wasn't quite sanity.

"Dad. If I write all of these — if I fill every single page — she'll forgive me. I know she will."

Cade's father stared at him for a long, terrible moment. Then he did something he hadn't done since Cade was a child.

He pulled his son into his arms and held him.

The idea came to Cade's father that same evening, while Cade was finally asleep — collapsed on the bedroom floor, still clutching his pen, surrounded by his desperate, obsessive confession.

"There's a show," he told his wife, his voice low. "A missing persons program. Very popular right now. Cade could go on it. Tell his story. Apologize publicly. If Elena sees it — anywhere in the world —"

It was a long shot. But it was the only shot they had left.