Ryan Michael Hale.
The real one.
Evelyn saw me looking.
“He was with us nine months and four days,” she said. “People said time would make that feel small.” She touched the frame gently. “It never did.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She nodded. “I am sorry too. For what was done with his name. For what was done to you.”
I swallowed hard.
“I didn’t know him,” I said. “But I’m glad his name is back where it belongs.”
Evelyn studied me for a long moment.
Then she reached for a box on the coffee table.
“When the investigators told me everything, I was angry. Then I was sick. Then I thought about you, waking up in that house, tied to our grief without ever knowing it.”
She opened the box.
Inside was a folded baby blanket, pale blue, carefully preserved.
“I don’t have much left of him,” she said. “But I wanted you to see something real. Not a forged paper. Not a stolen name. Real.”
