The scream ripped from Ethan's throat and died somewhere in the darkness of his cramped attic bedroom. Eleven years old and drenched in cold sweat, he shot upright, his heart pounding like it was trying to escape his ribcage. The taste of blood—not his own—lingered on his tongue, and for one terrifying second, he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't.
God, it felt so real. His hands were shaking as he pressed them against his eyes, the heels of his palms grinding against his eye sockets until stars exploded behind his lids. Too real to be just some nightmare. The kind of dream where you could smell the cafeteria food, feel the rough texture of a school uniform against your skin, taste the metallic fear in your mouth when you knew what was coming next but couldn't stop it.
The images kept crashing through his head like waves during a storm—Sophia Bennett's beautiful face twisted into something cruel and laughing, her emerald eyes cold as winter glass when she told him exactly what she thought of poor scholarship boys who dared to think they belonged. Derek Stone's fists connecting with his ribs over and over while a crowd of Crestwood Academy students cheered like it was some kind of sport. And worst of all, Adrian Ashford's cold smile when he told Ethan the truth about how his father really died, leaning against a marble pillar like he was discussing the weather instead of revealing a murder.
In the dream, he'd been eighteen. Eighteen and completely broken, married to a girl who'd never actually loved him, betrayed by everyone he thought he could trust. His body had been taller, stronger, but somehow more fragile—like all those years of hurt had worn him down to nothing. But that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was
finding out that his dad—his gentle, kind father who still cut the crusts off Ethan's sandwiches and left encouraging notes in his lunch box—had been murdered.
The bedroom door creaked open on its ancient hinges, the sound as familiar as his own breathing. His grandmother's face appeared in the doorway, silver hair escaping from/ the loose bun she always wore to bed. Margaret Rivers looked every bit of her seventy-three years in the pale dawn light, lines etched deep around her eyes from decades of smiling and worrying in equal measure, but those eyes were warm and alert despite the early hour.
"Another nightmare, sweetheart?"
Her voice was rough with sleep but gentle, the way it always was when she found him like this. She stepped into the room, her worn slippers—the ones with the hole near the left big toe that she refused to throw away because "they're just getting comfortable"—barely making a sound on the old floorboards that complained about everything else. Everything about her was comforting in the way that only grandmothers could be: the smell of bread dough and cinnamon that always seemed to cling to her clothes, the soft rustling of her faded cotton nightgown with its tiny purple flowers, the way she looked at him like he was the most important person in the world instead of just another burden dropped on her doorstep by tragedy.
Ethan wiped his face with his sleeve, trying to hide the tears he didn't remember crying. The cotton was damp and cold against his cheek. "I'm sorry I woke you up, Grandma." His voice cracked on the last word, and he hated how weak it sounded, how young and scared. Eleven years old and crying like a baby. Dad wouldn't have cried.
"Shh, none of that nonsense."
She moved carefully, the way she always did when he was upset—like she was approaching a spooked horse that might bolt at any sudden movement. Her arthritis was worse in the mornings, he knew, though she'd never admit it. He'd seen her rubbing her hands together when she thought no one was looking, working the stiffness out of her knuckles before she started her daily bread making.
"You didn't wake me, honey. I heard old Peterson's roosters getting started, figured I'd get an early jump on the day. It's Wednesday, isn't it? Mrs. Henderson ordered three loaves of my honey wheat bread for market day, and that woman gets cranky if her order's even five minutes late."
She was just talking to fill the silence, he realized. Giving him normal words to grab onto, ordinary Wednesday morning problems to anchor himself to so he could find his way back from whatever dark place the nightmare had dragged him to. Mrs. Henderson with her precise orders and her tendency to count out exact change twice. Market day with its familiar rhythms of setting up tables and arranging baked goods just so. The kind of small-town routine that had probably saved his sanity more times than he could count over the past year.
When she sat down on the edge of his narrow bed, the old mattress dipped under her weight with a soft groan. The springs were shot—had been for years—but somehow her presence made the room feel safer anyway, like nightmares couldn't survive in the same space as Grandma Margaret. Like whatever monsters lived in his sleeping mind took one look at her and decided they had somewhere else to be.
The smell of lavender and vanilla that always followed her around helped ground him in the here and now—this little room with its slanted ceiling where he'd bumped his head approximately a million times, and the single window looking out over the rolling hills of Willow brook, where morning mist was just starting to lift like a curtain on a new day. He could see the first pale streaks of sunrise touching the tops of the oak trees, could hear the distant lowing of cattle from the Morrison farm next door.
Ethan took a shaky breath, trying to slow his racing heart. His grandmother's presence always had this effect—like someone had turned down the volume on all the noise in his head. The room was coming back into focus: the faded blue wallpaper with tiny sailboats that he'd traced with his finger during countless sleepless nights, following their course from wall to wall like they might actually sail him somewhere better. The bookshelf his grandmother had built from old barn wood that was now sagging under the weight of library books and the few precious volumes that had belonged to his dad—technical manuals about computer programming mixed with dog-eared paperback mysteries and a collection of poetry that had surprised everyone at the funeral.
There was the photograph on his nightstand, the one that still made his chest tight every time he looked at it. His whole family at Ocean City the summer before everything went to hell. They'd all been smiling in that picture—really smiling, not the fake kind people put on for cameras. His mom's auburn hair was catching sunlight and salt spray, and she was laughing at something his dad had just said. Five-year-old Lily was building an elaborate sandcastle with towers and moats, her tongue stuck out in concentration the way it always was when she was focused on something important.
His dad's arm was around his shoulders, and they both had identical grins, the kind that made their eyes crinkle at the corners.
They'd looked so happy. They had been happy.
Margaret studied his face with the sharp perception that came from raising five kids of her own and burying a husband too young, from weathering seventy-three years' worth of storms and learning to read the signs when another one was coming. Her weathered hand reached out to touch his forehead, checking for fever out of habit, even though she knew this wasn't that kind of sickness.
"This one was different, wasn't it? Not like the others."
She was right, like always. The woman had an uncanny ability to see straight through him; had since the day he'd arrived at her door with nothing but a garbage bag full of clothes and more grief than any eleven-year-old should have to carry. The nightmares had been visiting him regularly since the accident—dreams of screeching tires and shattering glass, his mother's scream cutting off mid-breath, the terrible silence that followed. But those were just memories, trauma playing on repeat in his sleeping brain like a broken record stuck on the worst song ever written.
This had been something else entirely. Something that felt less like remembering and more like... living it. Like he'd actually been there, eighteen years old and stupid in love and too trusting for his own good.
Ethan nodded, not trusting his voice yet. How could he explain that he'd lived seven years in one night? That he'd gone from eleven to eighteen in the span of hours, experiencing every moment with a clarity no normal dream should have? He could still feel the ache in his muscles from working three jobs at once—dishwasher at Tony's Diner, stock boy at the grocery store, and weekend groundskeeper at the country club where rich kids like Sophia Bennett played tennis and never bothered to learn the names of the help.
He could still taste the bitterness when he'd found Sophia with Derek in the Crestwood Academy library, her legs wrapped around Derek's waist while she made the same soft sounds she'd made with him just days before. Could still feel the hot spike of pain when Derek's friends held him down in the dormitory bathroom while Derek used his face as a punching bag, all because he'd dared to think he deserved better than being treated like garbage.
He shuddered, wrapping his thin arms around himself. His body was eleven, small and vulnerable, all sharp elbows and knobby knees, but his mind was full of memories belonging to an eighteen-year-old who'd learned that kindness could be mistaken for weakness, that love could be used as a weapon, that sometimes death wore a friendly face and shook your hand at dinner parties.
"You want to tell me about it?"
Margaret smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead with fingers gentle as butterfly wings. The gesture was achingly familiar—she'd done the same thing when he was little and sick with fever, when he'd cried himself to sleep after his parents' funeral, when he'd woken up screaming during those first awful weeks in Willow brook when everything smelled wrong and sounded wrong and felt like he was living in someone else's life.
"I..." He swallowed hard, his throat feeling raw like he really had been screaming. "Grandma, have you ever had a dream that felt more real than being awake? Where you could feel everything—not just emotions, but actual physical stuff? Where you could taste food and feel pain and remember things that haven't happened yet?"
Something flickered across Margaret's face—recognition, maybe, or concern—before settling back into her usual calm attention. But Ethan caught it, that moment of something deeper than just grandmother worry.
"Tell me,"She said simply, the way she always did when she wanted him to know she was really listening.
For a moment, Ethan thought about telling her everything. But where would he even start? With the acceptance letter to Crestwood Academy that wouldn't arrive for three more years, delivered on a rainy Thursday that would change the course of his entire life? With falling in love with Sophia Bennett's emerald eyes and honey-sweet lies, the way she'd made him feel like he was the only person in the world when she wanted something from him? With the first time Derek Stone's fist connected with his jaw while classmates cheered like they were watching a football game instead of a beating?
Or maybe with Adrian Ashford—Victor's son—revealing that the car accident wasn't an accident at all, his voice casual and conversational as he explained how easy it had been to arrange, how his father had been planning it for months.
"It was about the future. About what might happen when I grow up."
He picked at a loose thread on his blanket, the one with the faded rocket ships that had been his dad's when he was little. His grandmother had found it in a box of childhood memorabilia and given it to him during those first terrible nights when nothing felt safe.
"I went to this fancy boarding school for rich kids. Crestwood Academy—it's up in New Hampshire, I think. And there was this girl..."
Heat rose in his cheeks despite everything. Even in a dream—especially in a dream that had felt so real—Sophia Bennett had been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. The kind of beautiful that made you forget how to breathe, that made you do stupid things and ignore red flags the size of parade banners.
"I thought she loved me. But she didn't. She was just... using me. Like I was some kind of toy she could pick up and put down whenever she felt like it."
The words tasted bitter in his mouth. In the dream, he'd been so sure. Sophia had said all the right things, made all the right promises. She'd made him feel like he mattered, like he was worth something more than just the poor kid on scholarship who didn't belong.
"And there were these guys who hurt me, and this man who—"
His voice cracked, and he had to stop, had to take a shaky breath before he could continue.
"Grandma, in the dream, I found out that Mom and Dad didn't die in an accident.
Someone killed them."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy as stones dropped into still water. Margaret's hand went still in his hair, and for a long moment, she didn't say anything. Ethan could hear the old grandfather clock ticking down the hall, the one that had belonged to his great-grandfather and chimed every hour on the hour except when it felt like being contrary. He could hear Mr. Peterson's rooster announcing dawn to anyone who cared to listen, could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears like drums.
"I see,"
Margaret said finally, and something in her tone made Ethan look up sharply. She didn't sound surprised. She didn't sound skeptical or worried about his mental health or any of the things he'd expected. She sounded... sad. And maybe, underneath the
sadness, resigned. Like she'd been waiting for this conversation without knowing it was coming.
"You don't think I'm crazy?"
"Crazy? No, sweetheart. I don't think you're crazy at all."
She shifted on the bed, settling in like she was preparing for a longer conversation. Outside, the sky was lightening from black to deep purple, stars fading one by one like someone was slowly turning down a dimmer switch. Soon it would be full morning, and she'd be in the kitchen making coffee in the ancient percolator that took forever but made the best coffee in three counties, according to half the town.
"The future's like a vast ocean, Ethan. We can see the waves coming toward shore, but we can choose how to meet them. Sometimes we can even change their course, though it takes more strength than you might imagine."
Can we? he wondered, studying her face in the growing light. Can I really choose, or is everything already decided? If Dad dreamed about his death and couldn't change it, what chance do I have?
Wait. Where had that thought come from? He'd never heard anything about his father having dreams about his death. But suddenly, with crystal clarity, he could remember his dad waking up screaming three nights before the accident, could remember his mother soothing him back to sleep with soft words and gentle touches. He could remember overhearing them talking in the kitchen the next morning, his father's voice shaky as he described a dream about a truck running a red light.
How could he remember that when it had never happened?
"Your dream—did it feel like just a possibility? Or did it feel like... a certainty?"
Ethan really thought about it, rolling the question around in his mind like a marble he was trying to understand the weight of. In the dream, everything had felt inevitable, like watching a train barrel down tracks toward a cliff with no way to stop it. Every choice had led logically to the next, every betrayal building on the last until he was trapped in a web of his own naive trust.
But now, awake and in this moment, with his grandmother's solid presence beside him and the familiar comfort of his small room around him, it felt... changeable. Like ink that hadn't quite dried yet, like words written in pencil that could still be erased.
"It felt real while I was in it. But now... now I'm not sure. Maybe it was showing me what could happen if I make all the same choices. If I trust the same people. If I'm as naive and stupid as I was in the dream."
"You're not stupid, Ethan Rivers. Don't ever think that."
Her voice turned stern, the voice she used when correcting him on something important, like when he'd tried to convince her he didn't need to wear a coat in December because it made him look like a marshmallow.
"You're kind. There's a difference, and it's an important one. This world has a terrible habit of punishing people for their kindness, of teaching them that goodness is weakness. But it's not. Your father was the kindest man I ever knew, and that wasn't what made him vulnerable—it was trusting the wrong person with that kindness."
Victor Ashford. She didn't say the name, but they both knew who she meant. His father's best friend since college, his business partner, the man who'd been like an uncle to Ethan before everything went wrong. The man who would give a eulogy about integrity and friendship while standing over the grave of the man he'd murdered.
"Grandma?"
Ethan's voice was small in the growing light. "What is it, sweetheart?"
"Did Dad ever... did he ever have dreams? About things that hadn't happened yet?"
Margaret went very still. For a moment, Ethan thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she sighed, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, somewhere that held secrets and old sorrows.
"Your father was a special man, Ethan. Special in ways that most people wouldn't understand. Yes, he had dreams. Visions, sometimes. He saw things that hadn't happened yet, and most of the time, he was able to change them. But not always."
She reached over to the nightstand and picked up the family photo, running her thumb across the glass like she could touch the faces underneath.
"He dreamed about the accident three times before it happened. Three times, he woke up screaming about a truck and rain and..." She trailed off, her voice thick with
old pain. "He tried everything. He changed routes, changed times, even tried to cancel that dinner entirely. But somehow, it always happened anyway."
"So I can't change it? Whatever I saw, it's going to happen no matter what?" "No, honey. That's not what I'm saying at all."
She set the photo back down and took his hands in hers. Her skin was warm and rough from years of kneading bread dough and tending gardens, from building bookshelves and fixing leaky faucets and doing all the things that needed doing when you lived alone on a farm.
"Your father couldn't change what happened to him because he didn't know who the real enemy was. He thought Victor was his friend right up until the end. But you—you have something he didn't have."
"What's that?"
"Knowledge. You know who Victor Ashford really is. You know what he's capable of. And if that dream was as real as I think it was, you know exactly how his son operates too."
Ethan thought about Adrian Ashford's cold smile, the casual way he'd revealed his father's crimes like he was discussing the weather. In the dream, Adrian had been untouchable—rich, connected, protected by family money and influence. But he'd also been arrogant, confident that no one would ever believe a poor scholarship student over the heir to the Ashford fortune.
"So, what do I do?"
"First, you get stronger. Not just physically, though that wouldn't hurt—you're all skin and bones, sweetheart. But mentally, emotionally. You learn to trust your instincts. You learn the difference between kindness and foolishness."
She stood up, her joints creaking like old hinges, and moved to the window. The sun was fully up now, painting the hills in shades of gold and green that made Willow brook look like something out of a postcard.
"And then, when the time comes, you make different choices. You don't go to Crestwood Academy, or if you do, you don't trust the pretty girl with the cruel eyes. You don't let bullies corner you in bathrooms. You don't marry someone who doesn't love you."
"But what if I can't? What if it all happens anyway, like with Dad?"
"Then you fight. You document everything. You make sure that if something happens to you, the truth doesn't die with you."
She turned back to him, and there was something fierce in her eyes, something that reminded him that she'd been a farmwife for fifty years, that she'd raised five children and buried a husband and survived the kind of hardships that would break weaker people.
"But I don't think it will come to that. I think you're going to surprise a lot of people, Ethan Rivers. Including yourself."
* * *
Twenty minutes later, they were in the kitchen, and Ethan was trying not to think too hard about prophetic dreams and murdered parents while he watched his grandmother work her morning magic. The kitchen was the heart of the house—a big, rambling room with mismatched cabinets that Margaret had painted cheerful yellow sometime in the eighties, and a massive cast-iron stove that had probably been here when the house was built.
Everything in the kitchen had a story. The cracked ceramic mixing bowl that had belonged to Margaret's mother. The wooden spoons worn smooth by decades of stirring. The collection of coffee mugs that had accumulated over the years, each one marking some small moment or memory—a church fundraiser, a school field trip, a vacation to the Outer Banks that had been cut short by rain but had been perfect anyway.
"Hand me the flour, would you, sweetheart?"
Margaret was already tying her favorite apron around her waist, the one with the strawberries and the stain near the pocket where she'd spilled blueberry pie filling three summers ago. Her hands moved with the kind of automatic efficiency that came from making the same recipes for fifty years, measuring ingredients by feel and intuition rather than careful measurement.
Ethan climbed onto the step stool—he was still too short to reach the high shelves comfortably—and pulled down the big canister of flour. It was nearly empty; they'd need to make a trip to Miller's Feed and Grain sometime this week. He liked going to Miller's, liked the way it smelled of sweet feed and leather and the way Mr. Miller always had a piece of penny candy for kids who were patient while their grandparent's conducted business.
"You know what I was thinking about while you were getting dressed?"
Margaret asked as she started measuring flour into the big mixing bowl. She didn't use a measuring cup—just scooped with an old coffee mug and somehow always got the proportions exactly right.
"What?"
"That conversation we had last month about you learning to drive." Ethan nearly dropped the flour canister.
"Grandma, I'm eleven. It's illegal for me to drive."
"On public roads, yes. But we've got forty acres of private property here, and that old pickup truck isn't doing anyone any good just sitting in the barn collecting dust and mouse nests."
She cracked eggs into a smaller bowl with practiced efficiency, fishing out a piece of shell with the tip of a knife.
"Besides, farm kids have been learning to drive tractors and trucks since they could see over the steering wheel. It's practical knowledge."
"You want me to learn to drive because of the dream, don't you?"
Margaret paused in her egg-cracking and gave him a look that was part pride, part sadness.
"You're too smart for your own good sometimes, you know that?" "Dad used to say that too."
"Your father was a smart man. Smart enough to marry your mother, smart enough to build a successful business from nothing, smart enough to leave detailed instructions
about what to do with his assets if anything ever happened to him."
She started mixing the batter, her wooden spoon moving in steady circles.
"But he wasn't paranoid enough. He trusted people too easily, assumed everyone else operated with the same moral code he did. That's not a mistake you're going to make."
"So, you want me to learn to drive in case I need to... what? Make a quick getaway?"
"I want you to learn to drive because independence is power, Ethan. The ability to go where you need to go, when you need to go there, without depending on other people—that's freedom. And freedom is something Victor Ashford and his son understand very well, which is why they try so hard to take it away from people."
She poured the batter into greased loaf pans with the kind of smooth, practiced motion that made it look effortless. Ethan knew it wasn't—he'd tried to help with the baking before and had managed to get more flour on the floor than in the bowl.
"There's something else we need to talk about too." "What?"
"Money."
She slid the loaf pans into the oven and set the timer, then turned to face him with an expression that was serious but not unkind.
"Your parents left you and Lily very well provided for, Ethan. The life insurance alone was substantial, and then there's the money from selling the business to Victor, the proceeds from the house, various investments your father made over the years..."
"I know all that. The lawyers explained it at the funeral."
"What the lawyers didn't explain is that I've been moving that money around. Quietly. Carefully. Into accounts that Victor Ashford doesn't know about, can't trace, can't touch."
Ethan stared at her. His grandmother, who got confused by the settings on the microwave and still wrote checks for everything, had been conducting some kind of covert financial operation?
"How?"
"Your grandfather wasn't just a farmer, sweetheart. He was also a very good accountant who did the books for half the businesses in town. He taught me things. Important things about how money works, how to hide assets, how to make sure predators can't get their hands on what doesn't belong to them."
She started wiping down the counter, her movements quick and efficient.
"By the time you turn eighteen, you're going to have access to more money than Victor Ashford realizes. Enough to buy your own school if you want to, instead of begging for scholarships to places like Crestwood Academy."
"But what about Lily? She's only six, she doesn't know about any of this—"
"Lily's trust fund is being managed by a very good attorney in Richmond who has no connection to Victor Ashford whatsoever. She'll be fine. More than fine. But you—you're the one who's going to have to deal with the Ashford directly. You're the one who inherited your father's gift for seeing what's coming."
Margaret hung up the dish towel and fixed him with a stare that was equal parts loving and fierce.
"So, we're going to make sure you're ready for them. All of them."
Five Hours Later
Ethan was behind the wheel of his grandfather's ancient pickup truck, and his heart was beating so fast he thought it might explode. The truck was enormous—or at least it felt enormous when you were eleven years old and could barely see over the steering wheel even with two cushions behind your back.
"Easy on the clutch, sweetheart. Feel how it wants to engage."
Margaret was sitting beside him, one hand on the door handle and the other braced against the dashboard, but her voice was calm and encouraging. They were in the big field behind the barn, far from any roads or neighbors or anything Ethan could accidentally destroy if this went horribly wrong.
"I can't reach the pedals properly."
"You're doing fine. Just remember—this truck is fifty years old and has been through everything you can imagine. It's not going to break just because you're learning."
Ethan pressed the clutch and tried to shift into first gear. The truck made a horrible grinding noise that made him wince.
"Sorry!"
"Don't apologize to me, apologize to the truck. She's the one doing you the favor."
Despite his nervousness, Ethan found himself smiling. Leave it to his grandmother to suggest he should be polite to a vehicle.
"Sorry, truck."
"Better. Now try again, and this time, give her a little gas as you let the clutch out. Not too much—just a whisper."
This time, miraculously, the truck lurched forward instead of stalling. Ethan gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white, but they were moving. Slowly, jerkily, but moving.
"I'm driving!"
"You certainly are. How does it feel?"
Ethan thought about it as they puttered across the field at what was probably five miles per hour but felt like fifty to him. How did it feel? Terrifying, definitely. But also... powerful. Like he was in control of something big and important, like he could go anywhere he wanted if he just learned how to work the machine properly.
"It feels like freedom." "Good answer."
* * *
As they sat in comfortable silence later that evening, Ethan found himself pulled back into the dream-memory, the details still vivid and terrible in his mind. But now, with a day of normalcy between him and the nightmare, he could examine it more objectively. Like studying a map of dangerous territory, he might have to cross someday.
It had started on his tenth birthday—the day his world ended. But in the dream, he'd experienced it as his eighteen-year-old self, with all the context and understanding that came from living through the aftermath. He'd seen things his ten-year-old self had missed, understood connections that had been invisible to a traumatized child.
He'd been sitting in the backseat of his father's BMW, watching rain streak down the windows as they drove home from his birthday dinner at La Bella Vista. That Italian place where his mom had taken him every year since he was old enough to sit still through a whole meal without needing crayons and coloring placemats. The restaurant had been warm and golden with candlelight, filled with the rich smell of garlic and tomatoes and fresh bread that made your mouth water before you even sat down.
His mom had let him order the lobster ravioli—the expensive dish he only got on special occasions—and his dad had embarrassed him in the best way by having the waiters bring out tiramisu with a single candle while they sang "Happy Birthday" in Italian. The waiter with the mustache had even taught him how to say "Grazie" properly, rolling the r in a way that made Ethan feel worldly and sophisticated.
Five-year-old Lily had fallen asleep beside him in the car, still clutching the stuffed rabbit their parents had bought her—not for his birthday, but just because she'd admired it in the toy store window while they were walking to the restaurant. She'd pressed her nose against the glass and made that soft "oh" sound she made when she saw something that captured her imagination completely.
She'd named it Mr. Flopping ton and had spent the entire dinner making him a place setting out of napkins and explaining to him what all the different forks were for. In the dream-memory, Ethan could see every detail: the rabbit's soft gray fur that was already getting matted from constant hugging, the pink satin lining its oversized ears, the way Lily's breath made its whiskers flutter with each exhale.
He'd been happy in that moment. Full of good food and birthday love, thinking about the new bike his parents had promised him—a real mountain bike with twenty-
one speeds and hand brakes, not like the little kid bike he'd been riding that was too small and made him look ridiculous. He'd been thinking about the party his mom was planning for the weekend with his school friends, how she was going to let him pick out his own cake this year instead of just assuming he wanted chocolate.
He'd been thinking about how lucky he was, how perfect his life was, how nothing bad could ever happen to people as good as his parents. The universe, apparently, had taken that as a personal challenge.
Daniel and Catherine Rivers had been those kinds of parents—the kind who noticed when their daughter's eyes lingered on something beautiful, who remembered small kindnesses, who'd built a technology company from nothing because they wanted to leave their children a legacy of innovation and hope rather than just money.
In the dream-memory, Ethan had watched his father's eyes in the rearview mirror—bright blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, which was often. Daniel had been telling a story about his own tenth birthday, when Ethan's grandfather had taken him fishing and they'd caught nothing but an old boot.
"We sat in that boat for six hours. Six hours under the hot sun, and we didn't get a single bite. I was starting to think the fish had all moved to a different lake, maybe sent each other messages about the two guys with the fancy gear who clearly had no idea what they were doing."
Catherine had laughed, the sound like music in the closet space of the car. "Let me guess—your father mounted it on the wall like a trophy?"
"He did! Hung it right in the den with a little plaque that said 'Daniel's First Catch, Summer 1985.' My mother made him take it down eventually—said it was attracting moths and making the whole room smell like pond water—but it was there for three good years."
Daniel's voice had gone soft and reflective, the way it always did when he talked about his father, who'd died when Ethan was too little to remember him clearly.
"But you know what? I remember that day more clearly than any other birthday I ever had. The important thing wasn't the fish we didn't catch. It was the time we spent trying together. It was my father showing me that sometimes the trying matters more than the succeeding, that the best memories come from the moments when things don't go according to plan."
"That's beautiful, honey."
Catherine had turned in her seat to look back at Ethan, her auburn hair catching the streetlights as they passed under them, turning it to burnished copper. Her eyes had been so full of love it almost hurt to look at; the kind of unconditional maternal adoration that made you feel like you could conquer the world just because she believed in you.
"That's why we're so proud of you, sweetheart. Not because of your grades or your achievements—though those are wonderful too—but because of the kind person you're becoming. Because you try your best even when things are hard. Because you care about people. Because you have your father's gentle heart and your own special way of seeing the world."
Ethan had smiled at her, feeling warm and loved and safe, surrounded by the people who mattered most in the world.
"Thanks, Mom. I love you too."
Those were the last words his mother ever heard him speak. And her words to him were the last she would ever say.
The truck had run the red light at the intersection of Maple and Fifth. In the dream, Ethan remembered it in horrifying slow motion, with the crystal clarity that came from understanding what he was seeing. His father humming along to some old jazz tune Catherine loved—something smooth and complicated that seemed to match the rhythm of the windshield wipers. They'd been waiting at the red light, first in line, ready to go when it changed.
Daniel had been tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music, and Catherine had been humming harmony, and Lily had been fast asleep with Mr. Flopping ton clutched against her chest. It had been one of those perfect family moments, the kind you don't realize are perfect until they're gone.
The light changed. Green meant go. Safe to proceed. His father had pressed the accelerator with the casual confidence of someone who'd driven these streets a thousand times, someone who trusted that other people would follow the same rules he did.
And then Ethan saw it—a massive delivery truck, one of those big eighteen-wheelers that wasn't supposed to be on residential streets anyway, barreling through the intersection like the lights didn't apply to it. No brakes. No slowing. No attempt to stop.
It ran the red light at full speed, heading straight for the driver's side of their car like a guided missile.
In the dream, with his eighteen-year-old understanding, Ethan had seen the truck's passenger door open just before impact. Had seen a figure jump clear with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this before. But his ten-year-old self had been too shocked, too focused on the immediate terror, to process that detail.
He'd opened his mouth to scream a warning, but time moved like honey, thick and slow and impossible to navigate. The words caught in his throat like they were physical things trying to claw their way out. His father saw the truck in the same moment—Ethan watched his eyes go wide in the rearview mirror, watched him try to swerve, but there was no time, no space, nowhere to go.
"Catherine—"
Daniel had begun, his hand reaching for his wife even as he tried to turn the wheel, tried to do something, anything, to protect his family.
The impact cut off whatever he was going to say. The truck slammed into the front driver's side of the BMW with a sound like the end of the world, like every piece of metal and glass in existence suddenly deciding to occupy the same space at the same time. The car crumpled like a soda can, and Ethan felt his body thrown against his seatbelt so hard he thought his ribs would crack.
Metal screamed. Glass exploded into a million glittering pieces that caught the streetlight like deadly confetti. The airbags deployed with gunshot cracks that seemed to echo forever. Lily's scream pierced through the chaos, high and terrified and impossibly loud.
The car spun, and Ethan lost all sense of direction, of up and down, of anything except the terrible certainty that this was how the world ended—not with a bang but with the sound of his family being destroyed. Then they hit something else—a light pole, maybe, or another car—and everything went dark.
When Ethan came to, rain was falling through the shattered windows, cold and impersonal. His head felt like it had been split open with an axe. His ears were ringing so loudly he couldn't hear his own thoughts. Everything hurt—his chest, his arms, his neck—but he was alive, and that seemed like a miracle and a curse rolled into one.
"Mom?"
His voice came out cracked and weak, barely more than a whisper. "Dad?"
Silence. Not even breathing.
Beside him, Lily was crying—a good sign, his shocked mind registered through the fog of pain and confusion. Crying meant alive. Crying meant conscious. Crying meant she was going to be okay, even if nothing else ever was again.
He tried to reach for her; to comfort her the way his parents would have wanted him to, but his arm wouldn't move right. There was something wrong with his shoulder, something that sent hot spikes of pain shooting down to his fingertips whenever he tried to lift it.
He could see Mr. Flopping ton on the floor of the car, soaked with rain and something darker that he didn't want to think about too carefully. The rabbit's pink satin ears were torn, and one of its button eyes was missing. Later, at the hospital, Lily would cry more about Mr. Flopping ton than about anything else, and Ethan would understand that sometimes it was easier to grieve for something small and fixable than for something vast and irreplaceable.
In the dream, Ethan experienced it all again with perfect, terrible clarity—every sound, every smell, every moment of confusion and pain. But this time, he saw something he'd missed in the trauma of that night, something his ten-year-old mind hadn't been able to process in the chaos: the figure who'd jumped from the truck's passenger seat.
The figure had landed in a practiced roll, coming up uninjured while the truck's driver—probably already dead or unconscious—took the full impact of the collision. The figure had walked away calmly, methodically, like someone finishing a job well done. No rushing, no panic, no concern for the family he'd just destroyed.
He'd paused at the edge of the scene, just outside the circle of light from the streetlamps, and looked back at the wreckage. Maybe checking to make sure the job was complete. Maybe just admiring his handiwork. And in that moment, illuminated briefly by the flashing lights of an approaching ambulance, Ethan saw his face clearly.
Victor Ashford.
His father's best friend since college. His business partner for fifteen years. The man who would stand at Daniel Rivers' funeral three days later and give a eulogy about integrity and friendship and the terrible randomness of fate, his voice breaking with what everyone assumed was genuine grief.
The man who had killed his parents in cold blood and gotten away with it because no one would ever suspect that Daniel Rivers' closest friend could be capable of murder.
But now Ethan knew. And somehow, that knowledge felt like the beginning of something—not an ending, but a terrible, necessary start