Part 2/3 — The Search in the Storm
I didn’t waste a single second. I grabbed my heavy winter coat, my flashlight, and my keys. Before I walked out the door, I paused at the entryway. I reached over and flicked the switch for the front porch light. I wanted it burning bright, a beacon pushing through the dark just in case he somehow made it back before I found him.
The drive south on the highway was a nightmare. The sky opened up, dumping a mixture of sleet and freezing rain that coated my windshield faster than the wipers could clear it. The road was a desolate ribbon of black ice and swirling snow, completely empty of other cars.
My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ached. Every shadow on the shoulder of the road made my heart leap into my throat. Where are you, Eli? I kept asking the darkness. When the world feels colder and nothing’s turning out right, please just take the road that leads home.
As the miles ticked by, the guilt I had carried for four years threatened to crush me. I realized that if I found him tonight, I couldn’t be the father I used to be. The man who demanded explanations, who needed to know what he was doing with his life, who judged every misstep. That man had driven him away. If I wanted my son back, I had to let all of that go. I had to let him know he didn’t have to walk alone anymore.
I was thirty miles down the highway, squinting through the relentless sleet, when my headlights caught something moving near the tree line. It was a hunched figure, stumbling against the bitter wind, completely soaked through. He looked like a man who was entirely tired of running in circles, carrying a weight that had finally become too heavy to bear inside.
I slammed on the brakes, the truck skidding slightly on the ice before coming to a halt on the shoulder. I threw the door open and ran out into the freezing rain.
“Eli!” I yelled over the howling wind.
The figure stopped. He turned slowly, shielding his face from the biting sleet. Even through the dark and the storm, I recognized the slump of his shoulders. It was my boy.
He didn’t walk toward me. He just stood there, shivering violently, staring at me with a look of absolute defeat. He looked like he was bracing himself for a lecture, expecting me to yell at him for ruining his truck, for being out in the cold, for failing again.
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