This time Myron stayed silent.

“It was everything, right? Elementary school, middle school, most of high school. That’s what shapes us. That’s what makes us everything we are.”

The barista gave her the total. Nancy Moore handed him the coins. He handed some back to her, along with a to-go bag.

“I don’t mean to push you,” Myron said. “But has Patrick said anything about what happened to him or where Rhys might be?”

Nancy Moore put the money back into her purse with a little too much care. “Nothing that would help,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

She just shook her head.

“What has he said?” Myron asked. “Patrick, I mean. Who took them? Where have they been all this time?”

“You want answers,” she said. “I just want my son.”

“I want answers,” Myron said, “because there is still a boy missing.”

Her gaze had steel behind it now. “You don’t think I care about Rhys?”

“No, not at all. I’m sure you care a lot.”

“You don’t think I know what Brooke and Chick are going through?”

“To the contrary,” Myron said, “I don’t think anyone knows as well as you do.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .”

Myron waited.

“Patrick can barely talk right now. He’s . . . not well. Mentally I mean. He hasn’t really spoken yet.”

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive,” Myron said, “but are you sure it’s Patrick?”

“Yes.”

No hesitation. No doubt.

“Have you done a DNA test?”

“No, but we will, if that’s required. He recognizes us, I think. Me anyway. But it’s Patrick. It’s my son. I know it sounds like an awful cliché, but a mother knows.”

Might be a cliché. Might not. Then again, to coin another cliché, we see what we want to see, especially when we are a desperate mother hoping to end a decade of pain.

Tears started flooding her eyes. “Some maniac stabbed him. My boy. You found him. You saved him. Do you get that? He would have bled out. That’s what the doctors said. You . . .”

“Nancy?”

The voice came from behind him. Myron turned and spotted Hunter Moore, Nancy’s ex-husband and Patrick’s father.

“Come on,” the man said. “We have to go.”

He let go of the door and disappeared to the left.

If Hunter Moore had recognized Myron, he didn’t show it. Then again, there was little reason he would have. They had never met before—he hadn’t been at the Baldwin house that day—and he seemed in a rush to hurry along his ex-wife.

Nancy scooped up the bag and coffee. She turned to Myron.

“It feels so inept to say thank you again. The idea that after all these years, that after finding Patrick alive, he would have been killed if it wasn’t for you . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll always be in your debt.”

She hurried away then, out the door and turning left to follow her ex’s path. For a moment Myron didn’t move. The barista said, “Would you like a refill?”