"Hello, Maya."
My heart stopped.
Lucas.
Alive.
Standing right in front of us.
Twenty years of questions.
Twenty years of guilt.
Twenty years of believing he was dead.
Gone.
Just like that.
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Ethan took a step forward.
"Lucas?"
The man smiled sadly.
"You still remember me."
Ethan looked like he had seen a ghost.
Maybe he had.
Because ghosts weren't always dead people.
Sometimes they were memories that refused to stay buried.
"You..." Ethan swallowed hard. "You survived."
Lucas laughed softly.
Survived.
Such a simple word.
Such a dangerous word.
"Yes."
The answer carried far more pain than relief.
My eyes filled with tears.
"Why didn't you come back?"
Lucas looked at me.
And for the first time, I saw something in his eyes.
Not anger.
Not hatred.
Heartbreak.
The kind that never fully heals.
"You never looked for me."
The words hit like a slap.
"No..." I whispered. "That's not true."
"It is."
His voice remained calm.
Too calm.
"After that night, everyone believed the story they were given."
"What story?" Vanessa asked.
Lucas looked toward the lake.
"The story that I drowned."
The wind rustled through the trees.
And suddenly he looked tired.
I'm very tired.
"As long as everyone believed I was dead..."
He paused.
"...the real criminals were safe."
My stomach dropped.
Criminals?
Ethan frowned.
"What are you talking about?"
Lucas turned toward him.
"You really don't remember, do you?"
Silence.
Then Lucas reached into his jacket.
Slowly.
Carefully.
He removed a small silver compass.
The same compass from my memories.
The same one he'd always carried.
He opened it.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Yellow with age.
Protected for years.
Maybe decades.
Lucas handed it to me.
My fingers trembled.
I unfolded it.
The handwriting was messy.
Childish.
But familiar.
Painfully familiar.
Then I read the first line.
And the world tilted beneath me.
"If anything happens to me, tell Maya it wasn't an accident."
I couldn't breathe.
My name.
Written by Lucas.
Twenty years ago.
Before he disappeared.
Before he was declared dead.
My eyes raced down the page.
And then I saw another name.
A name none of us expected.
A name that made Ethan stagger backward.
A name connected to both their families.
A name connected to the arranged marriage.
A name connected to everything.
Lucas's voice was barely a whisper.
"Now you understand why I stayed hidden."
Ethan's face had gone completely white.
Vanessa looked like she might faint.
I looked down at the note again.
At the signature.
At the person Lucas had been afraid of all those years ago.
And my blood ran cold.
Because the note wasn't accusing a stranger.
It was accusing Ethan's father.

What do you think happened?
A. Ethan's father caused the accident.
B. Someone framed Ethan's father.
C. Lucas knows only part of the truth.
D. The real villain is someone even closer to them.