Page 44 of Logan’s Way

The question now was different. Harder. More fundamental.

Whether to honor Logan’s choice. Whether to let him remain hidden. Whether to accept that truth didn’t always serve the good. Whether to live with knowing his brother was alive but unreachable, present in the world but absent from Angus’s life by his own deliberate choice.

Whether Angus’s need for reunion outweighed Logan’s need for invisibility. Whether finding his brother was more important than protecting what his brother was doing.

Whether love meant pursuing or letting go. Whether family obligation required presence or respect for distance.

Scout’s tail thumped softly against the floor. Dogs understood loyalty without requiring explanation. They understood love as presence without demanding more.

Angus thought about prayer. About bringing this to God the way he’d been taught. About asking for wisdom when the path ahead fractured into choices that all seemed wrong.

But he didn’t pray. Not yet. Not because he doubted God would answer, but because he feared what clarity would require.

He feared that God’s way would validate neither brother fully. That divine wisdom would show both Angus and Logan operating from righteousness that still missed something essential. That obedience might look like abandoning both truth and justice in favor of something neither brother wanted to accept.

Peace wasn’t available yet. The truth refused to stay contained, no matter how carefully everyone tried to manage exposure.

Angus looked at the letter one more time. At the confirmation he had been seeking for eighteen years. At the proof that raised more questions than it answered.

Logan was alive.

Logan was choosing invisibility.

Logan wanted to remain unfound.

And Angus had to decide whether honoring that choice was faithfulness or abandonment. Whether letting his brother stay hidden was obedience or cowardice. Whether accepting distance was love or failure.

The letter sat on the kitchen table, its thin paper bearing a weight that shouldn’t have fit in typed words and bureaucratic language.

And Angus stood in his kitchen with Scout nearby and his unanswered questions, the understanding settling into his chest like stone:

The conflict was no longer whether he would act.

It was whether he could continue not to act when truth had arrived uninvited, undeniable, demanding response whether Angus was ready or not.

Chapter Sixteen

Angus left the house without consciously deciding to leave, simply pulling on his jacket, clipping Scout’s leash, and stepping into the January cold, which felt cleaner than the air inside. The pup moved with him without question, faithful and unconcerned that their routine now included a midday walk as well as a morning walk.

They walked toward the harbor with no destination, no purpose beyond movement, because sitting with the letter had become unbearable, and standing at the windows had accomplished nothing except making the house feel smaller.

The knowledge settled in him like a stone that wouldn’t dissolve: Logan was alive, he was choosing invisibility, and he had been contacted recently enough that organizations still reached out to him, still believing Moira Reid was alive to receive notifications about her son declining involvement.

Scout padded along beside him, occasionally pausing to sniff mounds of snow or seagull droppings, the collie’s world uncomplicated by questions about obedience and truth, or about which brother’s choice carried more moral weight.

Weyport moved around them in its ordinary rhythms—boats in the harbor, trucks on the main road, people going about their lives with problems that fit neatly into systems designed to solve them. A town where sheriffs protected citizens, where laws functioned, where truth was something you pursued because revealing it served the good. A town where Angus had built a life believing those things were always true.

The cold bit through his jacket, but he kept walking. Scout seemed content with the extended route, with the extra time outside, with whatever silent processing his person needed to do before returning home.

Angus thought about Logan at maybe fifteen—not the disappeared brother, not the pattern of interventions, not the man who’d spent eighteen years operating outside the law. Just Logan, the boy who’d hated being noticed.

They had been at a community event in Las Vegas, some kind of youth program showcase where kids demonstrated skills they’d learned. Logan had performed something—Angus couldn’t remember what exactly, maybe speaking or music—and done it well enough that the organizers called him back to the stage for special recognition.

Logan had looked miserable, accepting the certificate with a forced smile, then disappearing the moment he was allowed to leave the stage. Angus had found him later sitting outside, deliberately out of sight of the crowd still milling around in the hall.

“You okay?” Angus had asked.

“I hate this,” Logan had said quietly. “People looking at me like I’m special. Like I did something extraordinary when I just did what anyone could do.”