Chapter 8 - Six Missing Hours
Ethan remembered almost nothing from the summer of 2005.
He was eleven.
Claire was seven.
Charles had recently renovated the estate.
Margaret had spent most of that year sad after her father’s death.
Certain memories remained vivid.
A bicycle with red handlebars.
A thunderstorm that broke a tree near the guesthouse.
Claire losing a tooth during breakfast.
But six missing hours?
Nothing.
Graham explained.
“One Saturday night, Charles brought you to my house.”
“What time?”
“Late. Maybe eleven.”
“Why?”
“He said Margaret thought you were staying with me.”
“Was I?”
“No.”
“Where had I been?”
“That’s the problem.”
Graham sat again.
“You were asleep in the back seat.”
“Drugged?”
“I don’t know. You looked exhausted.”
“What did Dad say?”
“He said you had gotten sick during a drive.”
“And then?”
“He asked me to keep you until morning.”
“Why?”
“He said he had business to finish.”
“What business?”
Graham closed his eyes.
“I didn’t ask.”
Ethan stood over him.
“You didn’t ask why my father appeared at midnight with his eleven-year-old son unconscious in the back of a car?”
“I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility.”
“That seems to be the Mercer family motto.”
Graham accepted the insult.
“What happened the next morning?”
“Margaret came for you.”
“Did she ask where I’d been?”
“She was furious with Charles. They argued outside.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
Graham rubbed his temples.
“She said something like, ‘You promised the children would never be involved.’”
Ethan stopped.
The children.
Not Ethan.
Claire too.
“Did you ever ask Dad about it?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was safer not knowing.”
Ethan drove directly to his mother’s hotel.
After the break-in, Margaret refused to sleep at the estate.
She opened the door wearing the same cardigan she had worn the previous evening.
“You look like you haven’t slept,” she said.
“Neither have you.”
She knew why he was there before he spoke.
Graham had called.
Margaret sat.
“I hoped you would never remember.”
“I don’t remember.”
Relief flickered across her face.
That angered him more than denial.
“What happened?”
“Your father took you.”
“Where?”
“He said for ice cream.”
“At night?”
“It was afternoon when you left.”
Ethan stared.
“He returned after midnight?”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t six missing hours.”
“No.”
“How long?”
Margaret whispered, “Almost nine.”
Ethan felt cold.
“Where did he take me?”
“He never told me.”
“What condition was I in?”
“You were exhausted. Confused.”
“Did I say anything?”
Margaret began crying.
“Mom.”
“You kept saying there was a man in the basement.”
Ethan did not breathe.
“What man?”
“You said he was bleeding.”
The hotel room blurred around the edges.
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Charles said you had seen a worker injured at a property.”
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I know.”
Ethan stood and walked to the window.
Traffic moved below.
“Was the man Adrian Cross?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know he was missing?”
“Not then.”
“When did you find out?”
“Months later.”
“And still you did nothing.”
Margaret cried quietly.
Ethan hated seeing it.
He hated that some part of him still wanted to comfort her.
“Why did Dad bring me?”
“I asked him that a thousand times.”
“What did he say?”
“That it was an accident.”
“What was?”
“He said he had to stop somewhere and you were sleeping in the car.”
“What property?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did I describe anything else?”
Margaret looked away.
“What?”
“You drew a picture.”
Ethan turned.
“What picture?”
“You became obsessed with drawing the same building.”
“Do you still have it?”
“I think so.”
They drove to the estate together.
In a storage room beneath the attic, Margaret opened boxes of old school papers.
Claire joined them.
They found the drawings after an hour.
A child’s picture in blue crayon.
A rectangular brick building.
Three windows.
A tall chimney.
A black car.
Two stick figures.
One small.
One large.
And beside the building, a symbol.
A circle crossed by two diagonal lines.
Claire stared.
“That looks familiar.”
“From where?”
She took a photograph and searched her phone.
Then she looked at Ethan.
“Oh my God.”
She showed him an image from Cole Development’s website.
One of Ryan’s distressed property acquisitions.
An abandoned textile mill outside Bridgeport.
Same chimney.
Same three-window facade.
And on a rusted metal sign near the entrance, the same old company symbol.
Ethan read the caption.
Hawthorne Industrial Works.
Acquired eighteen months ago by Cole Development.
One of the sites Charles had ordered Ryan to purchase.
They drove there before sunset.
The building had been abandoned for years.
Windows boarded.
Grass high.
Rust stained the loading dock.
Ethan stood at the gate.
A strange pressure built behind his eyes.
Not memory.
Something adjacent to it.
Claire touched his arm.
“You okay?”
“I’ve been here.”
“You remember?”
“No.”
He walked around the building.
At the rear, a broken door opened into darkness.
They called Daniel and local security before entering.
The basement smelled of wet concrete.
Their flashlights moved over old pipes and empty storage rooms.
Then Ethan stopped.
A metal staircase descended beneath the basement.
Claire whispered, “That isn’t on the property plan.”
They went down.
At the bottom stood a steel door.
Newer than everything around it.
Locked.
Daniel’s investigator arrived with authorization from Ryan, the legal property owner.
They cut the lock.
Inside was a small room.
Empty except for an old wooden chair.
A drain in the floor.
And carved into the concrete wall were three letters.
A.C.X.
Claire whispered, “Adrian Cross?”
Ethan stepped closer.
Beneath the initials was a date.
August 14, 2005.
The exact weekend Graham remembered.
Then Daniel’s investigator shined his flashlight into the corner.
“There’s something here.”
A child-sized jacket lay beneath a collapsed shelf.
Faded navy blue.
Margaret had described it years later in family photographs.
Ethan had owned one exactly like it.
Inside the pocket was a small plastic dinosaur.
Ethan reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the toy, memory came back.
Not all of it.
A flash.
His father shouting.
A man on the floor.
Rain striking metal.
May you like
And a voice whispering to eleven-year-old Ethan from the darkness:
“If you ever remember this, don’t trust Charles.”
