Jack was halfway across the park before he realized he was running. Eli wasn’t on the field. Not by the goalposts, not near the benches, not with the other boys shrugging uselessly when Jack asked where he’d gone. The cold under his ribs came back all at once.
He found him at the far end of the east path, sitting alone on a bench near the boundary gate, shoulders shaking. Jack slowed only when he saw Eli’s face. Red-eyed. Pale. Wrong. Then his son looked up at him and said, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Dad… I saw Mum.”
Jack turned before he meant to. Across the street, a woman stood in the doorway of a small blue house with one hand resting on the frame, watching them. He stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Because the woman standing there was his missing wife.