Page 40 of Finding Gideon

The quiet stretched, brittle as old twine.

I swallowed past the knot in my throat. “Dad.”

“You should’ve known better than to call today of all days.” His voice was steel. “What the hell were you thinking?”

My lips trembled, but I set my jaw. “I was thinking… maybe you missed me.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Dennis pressed his muzzle against my leg again, whining low. I stared out past the paddock, to the blurred green lines of trees beyond the field.Everything in me wanted to go back. Justonestep back in time. One hour. Three years. One lifetime.

“You didn’t answer me, Dad. Do you… do you miss me?”

“Don’t twist this. You’re the one who lived. You’re the one who let him fall. We lost our son.”

“I’m your son too.”

“Youwere.”

That one word hit harder than the rest. Past tense.

Were.

My fingers curled around Dennis’s fur as nausea rose. My head was spinning, ears ringing, but I wouldn’t let myself fold.

“I didn’t let him fall,” I said, low and hoarse. “I did everything I could to pull him back.”

A memory cut through like shattered glass:

Garrett’s fingers slipping from mine.

The panic on his face as he fell, arms flailing, scream torn from his throat?—

And silence.

Only the wind moving after.

Silence now too.

Heavy. Final. Not even the sound of breathing on the other end.

The line was dead.

They’d hung up.

I didn’t move right away. Just sat there, phone pressed to my ear, listening to nothing. Like if I held still long enough, they might come back. As if love could echo.

I pulled the phone away. My reflection stared back from the black glass—pale, gaunt, eyes too old for twenty-four. Garrett’s face, haunting mine.

My hand dropped to my side, phone still clenched in my fist. Then it slipped through my fingers, landing on the ground witha soft thud. The screen lit up, searching for something—a signal, a purpose—then dimmed again.

It felt like my ribs cracked open, like my lungs collapsed under the weight of everything unsaid. My palms pressed into my eyes until all I saw was red behind the lids.

It was too much. Too much silence. Too much blame. Too much loneliness.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to no one, to everyone. To Garrett. To the ghost that haunted me. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

I let out a sound—something between a groan and a scream. A jagged exhale torn from somewhere deep inside me.

Into the woods. Into the sky. Into the shed wall that had no answers.