I took the quiet archivist position at Harland Capital in Denver hoping my past would never find me.
The following Sunday, the world felt cleansed by the recent blizzard. The sky above Denver was a brilliant, almost painful blue, stretched taut over the Rocky Mountains. The city below looked peaceful, oblivious.
I drove west, winding my way up the snowy roads to the Golden Gate Canyon Park, to a specific overlook that Cade had mentioned once. He said it was where he went to think. I didn’t know if he would be there, but I had to try.
My car crunched on the icy gravel of the small parking area. The view was breathtaking: miles of silent, snow-covered pine trees giving way to the sprawling Denver basin, bathed in crisp winter light.
He was there. Cade. Sitting on a stone bench, his back to the city, his gaze fixed on the endless, jagged peaks. He looked smaller, somehow, his shoulders slumped beneath his heavy winter coat.
I walked slowly towards him, my boots sinking into the fresh snow. He didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge my approach. He simply sat, a statue of grief.
I sat down beside him, leaving a small space between us. The air was cold and still, broken only by the whisper of the wind through the pines. We didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. Words felt hollow, inadequate in the face of such profound loss.
We sat together, two solitary figures against the vastness of the mountains, united only by the heavy silence of shared sorrow. Toby was gone. Thomas was gone. The truth had emerged from the shadows, Bianca had fallen from grace, but the cost was insurmountable.
They gave me back my good name on a piece of paper signed in gold ink. But as I watched the mountain snow cover Toby’s quiet grave, I knew that truth, when it arrives too late, is just another word for grief.
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