Carter's Echo - 6. Chapter 6

Act VII: The Wall

The silence at the Jensen property wasn't the watchful, sentient hush of Brody’s house. It was a stagnant, heavy thing, smelling of rusted iron, spilled diesel, and twenty years of curdled ambition. Denton Jensen sat on the porch of his trailer, the wood groaning under his weight, a free man in a landscape that looked like a graveyard for machines. The gavel had fallen in the city, the "reasonable doubt" had been meticulously manufactured by high-priced lawyers he’d never seen before, and the law had opened the cage.

But Denton didn't feel at peace. He felt the itch of a phantom limb. He felt the "Sleep" ending—that long, grey period of two decades where he’d played the role of the bitter, broken father in a trailer, nursing a beer and a grudge while the world forgot the name Northern Cross. For twenty years, he had been a ghost haunting his own life. The trial had been the alarm clock, and the acquittal was the shot of adrenaline that finally cleared the fog.

A blacked-out Chevy pickup rattled up the dirt drive, its tires crunching over sun-baked mud and shattered glass, kicking up a plume of grey dust that hung in the humid afternoon air like a shroud. Gary ‘Brick’ MacReady climbed out, his heavy boots hitting the ground with a definitive thud, followed by Donny Masterson. They didn't approach like friends coming to celebrate a legal victory; they approached like lieutenants returning to a king who had finally remembered where he left his crown.

"Dent," Brick said, stopping at the base of the porch steps. He didn't offer a congratulatory handshake. He knew that in Denton’s world, a handshake was a weakness you gave to people you weren't planning to kill. "We got 'em. We mapped the movement while you were sitting in that cell in Ottawa. We didn't miss a beat."

Denton took a slow, deliberate pull from a bottle of warm Black Label. The whiskey burned, a familiar, grounding heat. "Tell me everything. Start with where the stain is hiding."

"He’s at the end of Compata Way," Brick said, his voice dropping into a low, predatory register. "Brody Levesque’s place. It’s a goddamn fortress of glass and polite letters to the council."

Denton’s eyes narrowed, the ice-chip blue turning dark and opaque. "Levesque. Charlie’s little brother. The one with the bleeding heart and the clean conscience." He spat a thick stream of tobacco juice into the dirt, watching it soak into the dust. "Charlie’s a problem for another day. A bigger fish, but even the biggest fish has a gill you can reach. Is the boy alone?"

Brick shifted his weight, glancing at Donny. "No. He’s with the McCormick kid. The twin. And he’s with Tom Highmore’s boy. Andrew."

The world seemed to go silent for a heartbeat. Denton froze, the bottle halfway to his lips. The name Highmore wasn't just a name; it was a physical trigger, a Pavlovian bell for violence. He felt the phantom ache in his jaw—the exact spot where Thomas Highmore’s thirty-six-inch Snap-On pry bar had shattered his bone and his reputation in the winter of ’81. It was a generational scar, a debt that had been compounding interest for forty years.

"Tom Highmore’s kid?" Denton rasped, his voice a dry, dangerous scrape of stones. "The little weasel ran to him? After everything I did to keep that name out of my house?"

"His name is Andrew," Donny Masterson said, the name sour on his tongue.

"Andrew?" Dent prompted.

"The hockey kid. Or was, before '95." Donny’s face darkened with the memory. "The Golden Boy. The Captain. Then he decided to become a walking scandal—came out, started parading around with that Brit, Will Carter. In the middle of a winning streak. Like he wanted to spit on all of us." He looked at Dent, his eyes hard. "He’s the lawyer now. The one protecting your son. The man who rotted this town from the inside out is its last bastion of justice. Ironic, isn't it?"

A slow, terrifying heat began to radiate from Denton’s chest. It wasn't just the Highmore name; it was the logic of it. In Denton’s architecture of the world, everything was property, and everything was subject to a hierarchy of purity. Jason was his blood. Jason was his property. To have his property "saved" by a Highmore—a queer Highmore—was an insult that transcended law. It was an infection.

"My son," Denton hissed, the words spraying a fine mist of whiskey and spite into the air. "My blood... in the house of a Highmore? Being 'educated' by a Highmore? You're telling me my boy is sleeping under the roof of the man who broke my face? That he's probably sucking his dick too?" He stood up, the old wooden chair screeching like a wounded animal against the porch boards. "They're turning him. They're making him one of them."

"Freddy saw 'em on the porch, Dent," Brick said, his voice a low hum. "They were close. Protective. The Highmore kid is acting like he owns the boy. Like he’s 'saving' him from you. He’s building a perimeter, Dent. A legal one, and a physical one."

Denton’s rage wasn't a shout. It was a systemic collapse of his twenty-year restraint. He gripped the porch railing, his knuckles white and trembling, until the old, rotten wood splintered under his calloused palms. The "Sleep" was over. The animal that had been pacing the cage of his trailer was finally out.

"It gets worse," Donny added, checking the driveway behind him as if the law might be listening. "There’s a rogue little Police Cadet—Bobby McCormick—hanging around that house. He’s the other twin. He’s a snitch in training, Dent. He’s there every day, checking the perimeter, talking to the Highmore weasel. If he gets wind of what we’re planning, the O.P.P. will be on us before we even put the trucks in gear. We can't hit a Levesque house while a Cadet is sitting on the porch."

Denton turned his gaze to Donny, his eyes twin points of cold, blue fire. "Your brother. Chief Masterson at the Smiths Falls detachment. He’s still got his head on straight, don't he? He hasn't gone soft on the 'new' ways?"

"He hasn't," Donny nodded quickly. "He knows who built this valley."

"Then call him. Now," Denton commanded. "Tell him there’s a rogue Cadet fraternizing with the Levesques. Tell him the O.P.P. has a major 'integrity issue'—a trainee hanging around a known associate of Charlie Levesque. I want that McCormick boy's badge under a microscope by morning. I want him investigated, reprimanded, and kept ten miles away from that cul-de-sac. Use the Masterson name to bury the little snitch in paperwork. Sidelined. Professional suicide. Make sure he’s too busy defending his own career to worry about what happens to my son."

"Consider it done," Donny said, a cruel, thin smirk touching his lips.

Denton didn't wait for them to acknowledge the plan. He turned and walked into the trailer, the screen door slamming with a metallic, final crack that echoed across the clearing. He went to the back, to the small, windowless bedroom that smelled of mildew, unwashed sheets, and the sour tang of old sweat. Under the bed, hidden beneath layers of dust and forgotten life, was a heavy wooden trunk bound in rusted iron chain.

He didn't bother looking for the key. He reached for a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters he kept by the nightstand—a tool of his trade from the days when he was the Sovereign of the Valley. The chain snapped with a satisfying, industrial pop. The lid creaked open, exhaling a breath of mothballs, dry rot, and forty years of focused, preserved hate.

Inside, wrapped in a faded, oil-stained Canadian flag, was his "Cut."

The heavy black leather vest of the Northern Cross was stiff from disuse, the hide as tough as a rhinoceros. He lifted it out, the leather creaking like a living thing, a familiar weight in his hands. The patches were pristine, protected from the light: the stylized white cross in the center, the "True North" scroll on the top, the "Enforcer" tag on the bottom. This wasn't a garment; it was a uniform. It was the skin of the man who had burned the Jamaican cabins in '79. The man who had "cleansed" the valley before the Highmores and the Gradys had ever tried to draw their "perimeters."

He pulled it on over his flannel shirt. It fit perfectly, the weight of the leather settling onto his shoulders like a mantle of authority. He felt the transition complete—the bitter, aging father in the trailer was dead, buried under the weight of the Cross.

He reached back into the trunk and pulled out a heavy, police-issue Maglite—the kind with the solid aluminum casing—and a length of heavy rebar he’d wrapped in black electrical tape for better grip. He tested the weight of the rebar against his palm, the balance perfect. It felt right. It felt like the end of an argument. It felt like justice.

He walked back out onto the porch. Brick and Donny were waiting by the truck, their postures changed. They saw the leather, saw the white cross gleaming in the twilight, and they stood a little straighter. The hierarchy of the valley had been restored. The "Great Game" had a player they actually understood.

"Denton's back," Brick whispered to Donny, a mix of awe and genuine fear in his voice.

Denton stood at the top of the steps, the setting sun casting his shadow long, jagged, and monstrous across the mud. "We wait for the dark," Denton commanded, his voice a low, vibrating promise of fire that seemed to make the air itself grow colder. "The Levesques won't protect them once they leave that property. And the Highmore kid? I'm going to show him that his daddy’s Snap-On tools don't work against a man who’s been 'cleansed' by the Cross. I'm going to show him what happens when you try to steal a man's legacy."

He looked toward the east, toward the dark, rising ridges of the valley where Compata Way hid behind the trees. "My house. My rules. My blood. Always."

He climbed into the black Chevy, the Maglite resting on the seat beside him like a scepter of lead and light. "Let's go we’re going to wash the stain out of this valley once and for all. We’re going to burn the infection out."

The Chevy roared to life, a guttural, snarling sound that tore through the quiet of the Merrickville evening. The "Sleep" was over. The Northern Cross was awake, and it was hungry for the blood of the boys who had dared to think they were free.

***

The rain at the Smiths Falls station wasn't a cleansing thing; it was a cold, rhythmic weight that pinned Peter McCormick to the end of the platform. He stood there, his white shirt a translucent second skin, watching the red tail-lights of the 16:15 to Toronto bleed into the grey curtain of the storm.

“JASON!” he screamed one last time, a raw, jagged sound that tore his throat.

The tracks didn't answer. The thunder did.

Behind him, Andrew Highmore was a statue of navy-blue wool and suppressed violence. He had dropped the phone receiver—it was still dangling by its metal cord, swinging against the brick wall of the station with a rhythmic clack... clack... clack. Andrew’s face was a map of cold realization. He looked at the 1980s Volvo sitting in the lot—a yellow, vibrating monument to low-speed reliability. Even if he drove it until the pistons melted, he would never catch a locomotive.

The law had failed them in the courtroom. Now, physics was failing them on the platform.

Andrew marched back to the phone, his boots heavy and purposeful. He didn't look at Peter. He couldn't. He dialed a number he had sworn he wouldn't touch for at least a year. A Toronto number.

The ringing was a torture. Then, a click.

“Hello? Avery-Woods, Will Carter speaking.”

The voice was like a ghost—soft, academic, carrying that familiar lilt of a man who spent more time with books than people. It was the voice of the man who had taken half of Andrew’s soul to a high-rise in the city.

“Will,” Andrew croaked.

There was a sharp, indrawn breath on the other end. “Andrew? What’s happened? You sound... God, is everyone alright?”

“It’s Jason.” Andrew’s voice was a frayed wire. “He ran. The trial... the bastard got off. Lapointe took the fall. Jason saw him walk. He thinks... he thinks he’s protecting us.”

“Where is he?” Will’s voice shifted instantly, the professional cadence falling away.

“A train. The 16:15 to Toronto. He’s in your suit, Will. The grey pinstripe. He’s got a cast and maybe fifty bucks.” The words tumbled out, a frantic inventory of despair. “He’s sixteen and he’s broken and he’s coming to your city alone.”

A silence stretched across the province, heavy with six years of shared history and the sharp, recent pain of their parting.

“The 16:15 gets into Union at 18:47,” Will said, his voice now crisp, a general assessing a battlefield. “I’ll be there. I’ll find him.”

“Will,” Andrew whispered, pressing his forehead against the cold, wet brick. “Listen to me. He’s not himself. He’s... feral. If he sees you coming, if he thinks he’s being corralled, he’ll bolt. He’ll disappear into that city and we will never get him back.”

“I know the look, Andrew,” Will said, and Andrew could almost see him adjusting his glasses, his kind eyes narrowing behind the lenses with a focus that was rare and lethal. “I’ve worn it. I’ll catch him. Tell Peter... tell him I have him.”

The line went dead. Andrew let the receiver fall, joining its twin in a slow, pendular dance against the wall. He turned. Peter was no longer on the platform. He was standing in the middle of the gravel lot, the rain plastering his hair to his skull, staring at the empty space where the train had been as if he could summon it back by sheer will.

“Will’s meeting the train,” Andrew said, his voice hollow in the downpour.

Peter didn’t look at him. “I’m going to Toronto.”

“No.”

“I’m not asking, Andrew.” Peter’s voice was low, vibrating with a fury that had no outlet. “He’s out there. He’s alone. And I’m standing in a fucking puddle in Smiths Falls.”

Andrew crossed the distance in three long strides, the gravel crunching. He grabbed Peter by the shoulders, not to shake him, but to root him. “If you go to Toronto, you become another variable. A lost kid looking for a lost kid. Will knows the city. He knows how to move through it quietly. You’d be a bull in a china shop, screaming his name in every alley. You’d scare him deeper into the shadows.”

“So what?” Peter yelled, wrenching himself free. “We just wait? We just hope? After everything? After that courtroom?” The word was a curse.

“We go home,” Andrew said, the command settling on him like a heavy, unwanted cloak. “We lock the doors. We wait by the phone. And we get ready.”

“Ready for what?” Peter spat.

Andrew looked toward the east, where the train tracks vanished into the rain and the gathering dark. “For whatever comes next.”

Union Station was a cavern of echoes, a grand, soot-stained temple to motion. The air was a soupy mix of diesel fumes, stale pastry, and the sharp, clean scent of fear that clung to travelers. Will Carter stood by the arrivals board, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a trench coat that felt like a costume. He was a man of quiet corridors and annotated margins, of structured meetings and HR policy. Standing here, a sentry in the chaotic flow of humanity, waiting for a runaway boy from a world of bruised knuckles and garden soil, he felt like a profound fraud.

His eyes scanned the crowd disembarking from Track 9. Families with suitcases, businessmen with leather satchels, students with overstuffed backpacks. Then he saw it.

A flash of dark wool, a subtle pinstripe. His pinstripe. It was draped on a frame so much smaller, so much more angular than his own. Jason moved through the throng like a phantom, head down, shoulders hunched, the left sleeve of the jacket clumsily pinned up to accommodate the white plaster cast. He looked like a child playing dress-up in a funeral shroud. The suit, which had been Will’s armor for a future that now felt sterile and thin, was a flag of surrender on Jason’s broken body.

Will’s heart hammered against his ribs. He didn’t call out. He began to move, parallel to Jason’s path, keeping pillars and kiosks between them. He watched as the boy reached the grand concourse and stopped, overwhelmed. Jason’s head swiveled, his grey eyes wide and darting, taking in the vaulted ceiling, the rushing crowds, the sheer, impersonal scale of it all. This wasn't Merrickville. This was a machine, and he was a piece of grit in its gears.

Will saw the moment the panic crested. Jason’s breath hitched; he took a step back, then another, his gaze fixing on the giant archway leading out to Front Street. The escape route.

“Jason!” Will called out, his English accent slicing through the ambient noise.

Jason’s head snapped up. Their eyes met across thirty feet of polished floor. Will saw no recognition, no relief—only the pure, electrified terror of a rabbit spotting the hawk. Jason saw the “Order” of Merrickville, the embodiment of the system that had just failed him catastrophically, standing in the heart of his promised anonymity.

He bolted.

“Jason, wait!” Will shouted, shoving past a startled tourist.

The chase was a short, brutal tragedy of logistics. Will was twenty-three, reasonably fit from weekend runs along the Harbourfront, but he was imprisoned in stiff leather oxfords and a wool trench coat. Jason was sixteen, bone-thin, and powered by the pure, uncut adrenaline of survival.

They burst out of the station onto Front Street. The city hit them like a wall—a roar of engines, a blare of horns, the smell of hot asphalt and exhaust. The summer evening was thick and humid. Jason, struggling in the oversized dress shoes, skidded on the pavement. Will watched in horrified fascination as the boy didn't break stride. In the shadow of an idling delivery truck, Jason kicked the shoes off. He didn't even glance at them as they spun into the gutter. He kept running in his socks—white athletic socks that were instantly stained black-grey by the grime of the city.

“Jason, please!” Will gasped, a stitch burning in his side.

He managed to corner him two blocks east, in a narrow service alley that reeked of rotting vegetables and urine. A heavy, locked security gate barred the far end. Jason hit the metal mesh, his fingers scrabbling for a purchase, but the cast made it impossible. He spun, his back to the gate, chest heaving. His good hand came up, curled into a pathetic, trembling fist.

“Stay back!” he hissed, his voice cracking. “Don’t touch me! I’m not going back! He’ll kill them! If I’m there, he’ll kill Peter! He’ll burn the house!”

Will stopped ten feet away, hands raised, palms open. He was panting, sweat tracing a line down his temple. He looked at Jason’s feet. The socks were shredded at the toes, already damp with what might have been blood or just city filth. A wave of nausea, profound and sickening, washed over him.

“It’s just me, Jason,” Will said, his voice low, trying to cut through the panic. “I’m not here to drag you anywhere. Just look at me. Just for a second.”

“You’re with them,” Jason spat. “The good guys with the rules. It doesn't work! None of it works! It’s all just... picking the lie that sounds right!”

“I know it doesn’t work,” Will said, and he meant it. He took one careful step forward. “I know, Jason. My dad... his rules changed whenever he felt like it, like I was standing on sand. You never knew what would set him off. I’ve sat in the corner trying to be invisible. I know what that’s like.”

Jason flinched. The feral light in his eyes flickered, confused.

“He’s coming,” Jason whispered, the fight leaching out of him, leaving only a hollow terror. “He said ‘see you at home.’ Home’s where he fixes it. Where he scrubs it out. If I go to Brody’s, that’s where he’ll come. He’ll burn it down. He’ll break Andrew. He’ll... he’ll take Peter apart just to prove he can.”

“Andrew won’t let that happen,” Will said, taking another step. “He’s different now. He’s stronger. He won't let anything touch you or Peter.”

“I can't,” Jason sobbed, the sound ripped from somewhere deep and wounded. “Mister Carter, you don't get it. I’m the problem. I’m the thing that brings him. If I’m near them, I get them killed. I have to... I have to go.”

“I work right here,” Will said, pointing to the building that towered over them, the Avery-Woods logo looking so sterile and corporate. “Come in, sit, we can talk properly…”

A police siren wailed, close, maybe a block over on Bay Street. Will’s head instinctively turned toward the sound.

It was less than a second.

When he looked back, the alley was empty.

He rushed to the security gate. There, near the bottom hinge, was a gap where the mesh had rusted and been clumsily repaired with a thinner gauge wire. It was bent outward, just enough. Will dropped to his knees, peering through into a darkened service corridor that ran under the Avery-Woods building itself. He saw a flicker of movement, a shadow melting into deeper shadow, and then nothing but the distant hum of a compressor.

“Jason!” he yelled, his voice echoing uselessly in the concrete canyon.

He grabbed the mesh and pulled, but it held fast. He was locked out. The boy was gone, swallowed by the city’s concrete intestines.

Will slumped against the filthy wall, his head in his hands. The knees of his tailored trousers were soaked with alley muck. He had failed. The boy was loose in the endless grid of Toronto in nothing but his socks, and he had no idea how to tell Andrew that his last, best hope had just vanished into the dark.

The call came through to the House just after midnight.

Peter was sitting on the kitchen floor, his back against the humming refrigerator, clutching a sprig of dried lavender he’d pulled from a pot on the windowsill. He hadn't moved in hours. Andrew was at the table, a bottle of Brody’s single-malt scotch sitting unopened in front of him like an artifact from a more civilized time. He was staring at the phone as if he could will it to ring.

When it did, he snatched it up before the first ring finished.

“Will?”

“He’s gone, Andrew.” Will’s voice was stripped raw, a whisper scraped over gravel. “I had him. I cornered him. I was talking to him. Then a siren... he was just... gone. He ran out of the shoes, Andrew. He’s in the city in his socks. I lost him. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

Andrew closed his eyes. He didn't yell. He didn't swear. A profound stillness settled over him, the kind that comes when the last possible good outcome dies. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the kitchen table. “Where?”

“An alley off Front, near the Avery-Woods tower. I’ve called the police. I gave them a description. They took a report. But Andrew...” Will’s voice broke. “It’s Toronto. A runaway kid in a suit is a line item. A sixteen-year-old who doesn't want to be found? It’s going to take time. They’ll keep an eye out. That’s all.”

Peter looked up from the floor, his eyes wide and hollow in the dim light. He’d heard enough. He stood, his legs stiff, and walked to the back door, grabbing his jacket from the hook.

“Where are you going?” Andrew asked, his voice flat, dead.

“To find him.”

“No, you’re not.”

Peter whirled. “You don't get to tell me no! He’s out there! He could be bleeding in an alley because of them! Because of their laws! I’m going to Toronto and I’m going to turn over every garbage can until I find him!”

Andrew stood, his chair scraping loudly. He crossed the room in two strides and caught Peter by the shoulders before he could yank the door open. It wasn't a hug; it was a containment, a physical barricade. “If you go to Toronto, you become a liability. You become another lost person Will has to worry about. You’ll panic him, Peter. You’ll scare him deeper. We stay. We wait. We hold this ground.”

“What ground?” Peter yelled, trying to wrench free. Andrew’s grip was iron. “What are we holding? An empty house? A garden he’s not in? He’s not here, Andrew! Our ground is wherever he is!”

Andrew’s grip tightened. Not to hurt, but to ground them both. “Our ground is right here,” he said, his voice low and rough, stripped of all polish. “Because if Denton shows up at this door tonight, I can’t hold him off alone. I need you. And if Will calls and says ‘I’ve got him, come now,’ we need to be in that car and halfway to the 416 before he can finish the sentence. You get it? We’re not abandoning him. We’re staying put so we can be the cavalry when it’s time. We’re the goddamn cavalry, Pete. We can’t be cavalry if we’re lost in Toronto too.”

Peter’s rage collapsed. He slumped against Andrew’s chest, his body shaking with silent, furious sobs. Andrew held him; his own jaw clenched so tight it ached. He looked over Peter’s head, out the darkened window towards the silent garden. The kind-hearted law student, the patient coach, was receding. Someone colder, more strategic, was standing in his skin, surveying a battlefield that had just expanded by four hundred kilometres.

Two weeks dissolved into a hazy, tormenting blur.

Will’s life bifurcated. By day, he was Will Carter, HR associate at Avery-Woods, navigating the air-conditioned sterility of corporate policy. By every lunch break, every evening, he was a ghost himself, walking the concrete canyons of the financial district, his eyes scanning every doorway, every sleeping form in a parkette, every thin young face in a crowd.

He walked until his feet blistered in his expensive shoes. He asked street vendors, security guards, the women at the hot dog carts. “Have you seen a kid, sixteen, thin, broken arm in a cast?” The answers were variations on a theme: a shrug, a sympathetic shake of the head, a weary “You and everyone else, pal.”

The hope curdled into a sick, constant dread. He began to see Jason everywhere—in the slouch of a boy at a bus stop, in the flash of grey fabric in a crowd. It was never him.

Then, on a Tuesday in mid-July, the air so thick with humidity it felt like breathing soup, he saw him.

Will was on his way back from a futile loop through the parking garage of the adjacent tower, a known spot for kids to shelter. He stopped, as he did every day, by the low concrete wall that bordered a sad, chlorinated fountain on Bay Street. It was a place to eat a sandwich, to watch the pigeons, to feel momentarily outside the machine.

There, sitting between a bike courier wolfing down a slice of pizza and an old man feeding birds, was a figure that made the breath freeze in Will’s lungs.

It was Jason, but it was a Jason eroded by the city. The elegant grey suit was gone. He wore a massive, hooded sweatshirt, charcoal grey and stained with ambiguous patches of dark grease and dirt. It swamped him. His jeans were torn at the knees. On his feet were a pair of battered, mismatched sneakers, the laces gone, replaced with bits of twine. His hair was a matted, greasy tangle. His face was smudged with grime, but it was the cast that told the story. The pristine white plaster was now a map of urban decay—scuffed grey, stained with dirt and what looked like dried food, the edges fraying into a soft, fuzzy line.

And there, cinched around his too-thin waist over the hoodie, was a strip of faded blue silk. Will’s old tie. The one he’d worn to his graduation. Jason was using it as a belt.

Will’s heart didn't just stop; it seemed to shrivel in his chest. He leaned against the wall a few feet away, giving himself a moment to steady his breathing, to school his face into something neutral.

“Suit didn't last, then,” Will said, keeping his tone light, almost conversational.

Jason didn't startle. He didn't look up. He’d known Will was there. He’d probably been watching him approach for blocks. He just let out a long, tired sigh. “Was too big. Got in the way.”

“I suppose it would,” Will agreed. He sat down on the warm concrete, leaving a careful three feet of space between them. The bike courier glanced at them, then moved away. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Why?” Jason asked, his voice flat. He was staring at his own hands, his good thumb picking compulsively at a scab on his knuckle. “Told you. Not going back.”

“Why are you here, then?” Will asked gently. “Of all the places in Toronto, why this wall? Outside my office?”

Jason shrugged, a small motion. “It’s a wall. Pigeons don't ask questions.”

Will looked at him. The sharp planes of his cheekbones were knife-edges under the dirt. The hollows under his eyes were bruise-dark. He looked half-starved.

“Hungry?” Will asked.

Jason didn't answer. His stomach did. A loud, guttural growl echoed against the concrete.

Will stood up slowly. “Wait here. If you run, I won't chase you. I’m done with alley sprints. But if you stay, I’ll get you a proper sandwich.”

Jason finally looked at him. His grey eyes were weary, dull. He searched Will’s face, looking for the trap. He must not have found it.

“Okay,” he said, the word barely a whisper.

Will walked to the deli, his hands shaking as he paid for a massive turkey club, chips, and juice. He moved quickly, terrified the boy would be gone.

Jason was still there. He hadn't moved.

Will handed him the bag and sat back down. He didn't ask questions. He didn't talk about Merrickville. He unwrapped his own sandwich and began to talk about nothing. The ridiculous memo about the photocopier. The new intern who was terrified of the coffee machine. The pigeon with one leg.

He talked to fill the silence.

Jason ate. It was desperate, mechanical. His hands shook as he shoved food into his mouth, his eyes darting around even as he chewed. Will kept talking, a gentle, steady sound.

When the last crumb was gone, Jason sat for a moment, staring at the empty wrapper. Then he stood up, stiff.

“I have to go,” Jason said, not looking at Will.

“Okay,” Will replied. “Same time tomorrow?”

Jason paused, his eyes flicking to the black glass tower, then down to his shoes. A long, silent battle played out on his face. Finally, a tiny nod. “Maybe.”

He turned and walked away, a hunched figure in the oversized hoodie, disappearing into the foot traffic, the faded blue tie flapping at his waist. Will watched until he was gone, then put his head in his hands and cried.

The ritual was born.

For the next seven weeks, through the oppressive furnace of August and into the first cool whispers of September, the wall on Bay Street was their cathedral.

Will became the most reliable thing in Jason’s unraveled world. At 12:15, he would descend. He never came empty-handed. Sandwiches, stew in a thermos, fruit, juice. Once, a slice of chocolate cake.

He never asked for anything. He never reached out to touch. He simply sat, ate, and talked. Office gossip. A book. City hall architecture. The one-legged pigeon, “Hop-Along.” He created a space where Jason could simply be.

Jason began to change. The feral panic receded, replaced by exhaustion. He started to arrive early. He began to make tiny disclosures. A grunt about the cake (“too sweet”). A question about thermoses. He stopped flinching at loud noises.

But the street was not kind. It wrote its lessons on his body. He showed up with a fresh bruise over his kidney, moving stiffly. Another time, a split lip.

“Skitter fight,” Jason muttered when Will’s eyes lingered on the bruise. “Over a dry spot under the Gardiner. He was bigger. I was faster. Got the spot.”

Will’s heart cracked each time. He would go back to his office, close the door, and call Andrew.

“He’s alive, Andrew,” Will would say, his voice low. “He’s thin. Dirty. Getting harder. But he’s talking. He’s eating. The trust is a thread, but it’s holding.”

“Is he ready?” Andrew would ask. In the background, the sounds of the garage—metal on metal, a grinder, Walter Grady’s radio.

“Not yet. He still thinks he’s protecting you by staying away. The street is just proving his point every day.”

The police had come by Will’s office once. They were polite, professional, powerless. “Without evidence he’s in immediate danger, our hands are tied. He’s sixteen. He has the right to refuse contact. We’ll keep the report active, but Mr. Carter... there are hundreds of kids like him.”

Will thanked them. The ice around his hope thickened.

In Merrickville, Peter’s fury had calcified. He wasn't weeping. He was a silent engine of research on Brody’s old computer, dialing up, in chat rooms, printing maps of Toronto shelters, cross-referencing bus routes. He compiled lists, his notes precise and furious. He didn't talk about it. He just did it, his jaw clenched, his eyes holding a flat, dangerous light. When he wasn't at the computer, he was in the garden, but it wasn't therapy. It was trench warfare. He attacked weeds with vicious precision. He was not waiting passively. He was arming himself with knowledge.

By late September, the Toronto wind had shifted. It was a blade, sharp and damp. The rain was cold. The nights held a promise of frost.

Will found Jason on the wall, shivering violently in his thin hoodie. His lips were bluish. He looked defeated by the coming season.

Will didn't bring a sandwich. He carried a shopping bag. He dropped it at Jason’s feet.

“Put these on,” Will said.

Jason looked at the bag, wary.

“Open it.”

Slowly, Jason pulled out a heavy, fleece-lined parka. Sturdy boots. A wool hat. Gloves.

“I can't pay you,” Jason whispered.

“I don't want your money. I want you to stop turning blue. Coat on. Now.”

With stiff fingers, Jason pulled the parka on. He zipped it, and a shuddering sigh of relief escaped him. He slumped against the wall, burying his face in the collar.

Will sat beside him. “I have a house. In Scarborough. Small. Quiet, just me and my roommate Jared. Guest room locks from the inside. Furnace works. You could stay. No going back to Merrickville until you say. Just... inside.”

“I can't,” Jason mumbled into the coat.

“It’s getting cold, Sprog,” Will said, using the old familiar term he always used for those kids he was fond of. “Then winter. You won't survive on a grate. Not with that arm. Infection. Pneumonia. You’ll die in a doorway, and I’ll have to call Andrew and tell him you died cold and alone thinking you were a problem that needed removing.”

Jason flinched.

“You’re not going back to Merrickville,” Will pressed. “You’re coming home with me. To my house. Here. We’ll wait together. You’re not alone. I’m not Andrew. I’m not Peter. I’m just Will. And I will never, ever hurt you. You have my word.”

Jason was crying now, silent tears cutting tracks through the grime. The cold, the exhaustion, the weight of two months broke him. He was a freezing, starving child.

“Is...” Jason’s voice was shattered. “Is Peter...”

“Peter misses you,” Will said gently. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “He’s been in that garden for two months. He’s not tending it. He’s guarding it. For you.”

Will dialed. He didn't ask. He pressed the phone into Jason’s gloved hand.

“Hello?” Peter’s voice came through, sharp, immediate.

Jason froze.

“Peter?” he whispered.

A gasp. A silence. Then a raw, broken sound.

“Jason? Oh my god... Jason? Is it you? Are you there? Are you hurt?”

“I’m... I’m sorry,” Jason wept. “I’m sorry I ran.”

“Shut up!” Peter’s voice was a fierce snarl. “Shut up about being sorry! You’re on the phone! You’re alive! Jason, please... please come home. The garden’s dead. The bed’s freezing. I can’t do the morning thing without you there. It doesn't work.”

Jason let out a wet, shuddering laugh. “You’re a sentimental pervert, McCormick.”

“I don’t care! I’ll be whatever you want! Just... don't be a ghost anymore. Please.”

Jason cried, holding the phone. After a minute, he handed it back.

Will took it. “Peter? He’s here. He’s safe. I’ve got him.”

A muffled breath, then Peter’s voice, strained: “Don't let him go.”

“I won't.” Will hung up. “Jason?”

Jason looked up, his face a ruin of tears and dirt and hope. “Can I...” he swallowed. “Can I stay one night? Just to get clean? And warm?”

Will offered a soft, weary smile. He reached out and took Jason’s good hand. “As many nights as you need, Sprog. Let's go home.”

As they stood and walked away from the wall, the first snowflake of an early autumn storm drifted down. It landed on the shoulder of Jason’s new blue coat and vanished.

The House of Mending was still a hundred miles away. But the boy who had believed himself a stain was no longer running. He was walking, holding the hand of another survivor, toward a door that promised a lock on the inside.