I enroll in trade school that fall. The program is eighteen months, a combination of classroom instruction and hands-on training, and I throw myself into it the way I've thrown myself into everything since the Hendersons, the way Jay taught me to approach survival. I study until my eyes blur and my head aches. I practice wiring circuits until I can do it in my sleep, until my hands know the movements without conscious thought. I show up early and stay late and ask questions until my instructors start to recognize me as the kid who actually wants to learn, who's actually going to make something of himself.
The monthly searches continue like clockwork, like a ritual I can't abandon. The first of every month, without fail, I sit down at the computer and I look for Jay. I've gotten more sophisticated over the years, learned how to use public records databases and social media searches and all the free tools available to someone who's desperate enough to learn them, who spends hours reading forums and watching tutorials. I search for Jason Michael Morrow and Jay Morrow and J. Morrow in every state I can think of, in every database I can access.
Nothing.
Month after month, year after year, nothing but empty search results and dead ends. Somewhere around my nineteenth birthday, I start searching death records too.
I don't want to. The thought makes me physically sick, makes my hands shake as I type the words into the search bar, makes my vision blur with something that might be tears if I still cried. But I have to know.It's been years since we were separated, years of searching desperately, and I've found nothing.
People don't just disappear in the age of the internet, not completely. Even foster kids, even the ones who fall through the cracks, leave some kind of digital footprint somewhere.
Unless they're dead.
The first time I search death records, I spend twenty minutes afterward sitting on the bathroom floor with my back against the door, breathing slowly through my nose the way Jay taught me when things got bad. I'm convinced I'm going to find his name on a list somewhere, convinced that I've been searching for a ghost this whole time, that he's been gone for years and I didn't know, that the promise I've been holding onto is nothing but ashes and smoke. I'm convinced that all these years of searching have been for nothing, that I've been talking to someone who can't hear me, who's been gone since the day they took him away.
But his name isn't there. Not in Georgia, not in the surrounding states, not anywhere I can find. He's not dead. At least, not officially. At least, not that anyone has recorded in a database I can access.
I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse. He's not dead, but he's also not anywhere. He's just gone, vanished. Vanished into the same system that swallowed us both, except I clawed my way out and he's still lost somewhere in the dark, somewhere I can't reach.
I finish trade school while I'm still nineteen and I get a job with a local electrical company that pays better than anything I've ever earned in my life, more money than I knew was possible. I start saving aggressively, putting away as much as I can from every paycheck, building something for the future even though I don't know what that future looks like.
Rosalyn and Mitchell sit me down one evening a few weeks after I start working, and I feel my whole body go tense the moment they ask to talk to me because I know what's coming.
This is the conversation where they tell me it's time to move out, time to find my own place, time to stop taking up space that's meant for kids who actually need it. This is where they thank me for being easy to dealwith and wish me luck and send me on my way with a garbage bag and a handshake.
Instead, Rosalyn takes my hand in both of hers and says, "We want you to know that this is your home, Ivan. For as long as you want it to be."
I stare at her, not understanding the words, unable to process what she's saying.
"You're not a foster kid anymore," Mitchell says gently, his rough carpenter's hands folded on the table. "You aged out of the system. You're an adult now. But that doesn't mean you have to leave. Some of our kids have stayed until they were twenty-five, thirty, until they were ready to go, until they had enough saved for their own place. You're part of this family, Ivan. That doesn't end when the state stops sending checks. Family doesn't have an expiration date."
I don't know what to say. I don't know how to explain that no one has ever wanted to keep me before, that every other placement I've ever had has ended with a packed garbage bag and a car ride to somewhere new, that I've never been part of anything permanent. I don't know how to tell them that I don't know how to be someone's family, that I'm still waiting for them to realize I'm not worth keeping.
"I can pay rent," I manage to say. "Now that I'm working, I can contribute to expenses, help with—"
"We'll figure that out," Rosalyn interrupts gently, squeezing my hand. "But that's not the point. The point is that you have a home here. You belong here. For as long as you need it. For as long as you want it. This is where you belong. Do you understand?"
I nod because I can't speak. My throat is too tight.
But my eyes are burning and Rosalyn is looking at me with so much love and Mitchell is nodding like this is the most natural thing in the world.
"Thank you," I whisper, because it's all I can say, all I can force past the lump in my throat.
But I stay.
I stay in my room at the Reyes house, with the sounds of the other kids through the walls, with Rosalyn's cooking filling the house withsmells that mean home, with Mitchell's quiet wisdom and the beautiful chaos of Sunday dinners when the house overflows with laughter and noise and life.
I stay because they asked me to, because they want me to, because for the first time in my life I have a home that isn't going to kick me out, a family that isn't going to give up on me.
I'm deep into my electrical apprenticeship now, and my boss, Frank, tells me I'm the best first-year he's had in a decade. He's started bringing me to the complicated jobs, the ones where precision matters, where one mistake could cost thousands. He trusts me with the work that most apprentices don't get to touch until year three. He mentions raises, talks about fast-tracking my training, about how I could have my own crew someday if I stay on this path.
My life is coming together in ways I never thought possible, in ways that feel like they're happening to someone else. I have a career path, a family that loves me, a room in a house full of people who would miss me if I was gone.
Everything I ever wanted.
Everything except Jay.
I've spent almost a third of my life looking for someone who seems determined to stay lost, who seems to have vanished into thin air.
