Quincy Williams and his friends walked into an upscale fashion boutique on Main Street in Demopoulos, Alabama, the kind of storefront that looked like it belonged in Atlanta or New Orleans instead of a river town where the air always seemed to carry a faint mix of red clay and cut grass. They were only there because they’d made the drive in for errands, because sometimes you went to the bigger town for a part you couldn’t find at the local shop, for a haircut that didn’t feel rushed, for groceries that didn’t come from one aisle and a prayer. They didn’t look like the people in the glossy posters taped inside the windows, but they weren’t trying to. They were just three men in their twenties in clean jeans and decent shirts, trying to put one foot in front of the other with a hole in their lives that still hadn’t stopped aching.

They wandered through the front displays, pretending they didn’t notice the price tags that could’ve covered a month’s rent back home, and drifted toward the quieter back section where the lighting dimmed and the music sounded farther away. That’s where the mannequins stood. Not the cheap plastic kind with scuffed ankles and blank faces, but high-end, custom-looking figures posed like they had stories. Five of them, lined up in a corner that felt half forgotten, dressed in suits that looked like they’d been cut for men who never had to worry about grease under their nails.

Then Quincy stopped so hard it was like someone had grabbed his spine and yanked.

One mannequin, posed slightly apart from the others, wore a charcoal-gray suit and a crisp white shirt. Its head was angled just enough to suggest confidence. Its mouth held a hint of a smile, not wide, not cartoonish, but familiar in the way certain expressions could live inside you for years, like a song you couldn’t stop hearing. The face, the cheekbones, the set of the eyes, the crooked nose that turned just slightly to the left.

Quincy’s mouth went dry.

Braxton Hayes took one more step before realizing Quincy wasn’t moving.

“Man,” Braxton said, low and confused, “what’s wrong with you?”

Quincy didn’t answer. His pulse was loud in his ears, louder than the music. He walked toward the mannequin like he didn’t quite trust his legs, like he expected the floor to tilt under him. The closer he got, the more his brain tried to rescue him, tried to offer a softer explanation. A coincidence. A look-alike. A designer’s idea of a handsome face that happened to resemble someone Quincy missed so much his eyes were playing tricks on him.

But the details stacked up too fast.

The angle of the nose wasn’t just similar, it was exact. The faint ridge where it had healed wrong. The small scar above the left eyebrow, barely there, but there, just where Quincy remembered it from when they were kids. The mole on the left cheek, a tiny mark that somehow made the whole face more itself.

Quincy’s throat tightened until it hurt.

“That’s Jaden,” he whispered, and the words sounded crazy the second they left his mouth, but they also sounded true in a way that made his stomach twist. “That’s my best friend.”

Devonte Campbell let out a sharp breath, half laugh, half warning.

“Quincy,” he said, like he was trying to pull his friend back from the edge of something. “Come on. That’s a mannequin.”

Quincy’s hands shook as he pulled his phone from his pocket. He couldn’t even type right at first. His fingertips were clumsy, like his body had decided fine motor control was a luxury it couldn’t afford. He opened Jaden Pierce’s Instagram, scrolled to a photo from February, a week before Jaden disappeared. Jaden smiling in the sunlight, head slightly tilted, that same crooked confidence he’d always had.

Quincy held the phone up next to the mannequin’s face.

Braxton’s expression changed first. The skepticism slipped, replaced by something wary and pale.

“Oh,” Braxton said, and his voice dropped like someone had turned down a dial. “Oh, hell.”

Devonte leaned in, eyes narrowing. He looked from the photo to the mannequin and back, like he could brute-force reality into behaving.

“That scar,” Devonte murmured. “That’s… that’s in the same place.”

Quincy swallowed hard.

“When we were twelve,” he said, and his voice sounded far away to him, like he was hearing himself through a wall, “Jaden fell off his bike. Broke his nose. Right in front of his mama’s house. He cried so hard he tried to pretend he wasn’t crying, like that made it better. It healed crooked. That’s the nose.”

Braxton stared at the mannequin as if it might blink.

“And the mole,” Quincy continued, the words spilling out now because his brain didn’t know how to stop. “Left cheek. He had it since he was a baby. His mama used to kiss it when she’d say goodnight. That’s… that’s him.”

Devonte, slow and careful, reached out.

“Don’t,” Quincy said, too late, because Devonte’s fingers had already brushed the mannequin’s cheek.

Devonte jerked his hand back immediately, like he’d touched a stove that wasn’t supposed to be hot.

“Nah,” Devonte said, and his eyes widened in a way that made Quincy’s skin prickle. “Nah, something’s wrong.”

“What?” Braxton asked, but even he didn’t sound convinced anymore.

Devonte touched it again, faster this time, like he needed to confirm the first sensation before he admitted it out loud.

“It ain’t plastic,” Devonte said. “It’s… coated, like something’s under it. And it’s warm.”

Quincy stepped forward, the fear in him turning sharp, almost angry, as if anger could be armor.

He pressed his fingertips to the mannequin’s jawline.

The surface had a sheen, but not the clean, synthetic slickness he expected. It was smoother than skin but not as smooth as plastic, and underneath, there was a density that felt wrong. Not hollow, not cheap. And the warmth was faint, subtle, but unmistakable, as if the air-conditioning couldn’t quite erase it.

Quincy’s vision tunneled. For a second the store seemed too bright, too quiet, too normal for what he was feeling.

“We need police,” Quincy said, and his voice came out hollow. “Right now.”

Braxton’s eyes darted around, already imagining what it looked like from the outside. Three Black men in a boutique that probably had cameras in every corner. A loud accusation. A scene that would turn on them before anyone asked what they meant.

Devonte nodded once, hard.

“Don’t touch it again,” Devonte said, like he was talking to all of them, like he was talking to his own hands. “We step back. We call. We do it the right way.”

Quincy forced his feet to move. He backed away from the mannequin, even though every instinct in him screamed to grab it, to pull it down, to prove to himself it was not what his body already believed it was. He walked back into the brighter part of the store, to a spot where he could see the register and the front doors and the reflection of himself in the polished floor.

He dialed 911 with shaking fingers.

The operator answered, brisk and practiced.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

Quincy inhaled, trying to keep his voice steady enough to be taken seriously.

“I need officers at Rossi Couture on Main Street in Demopoulos,” he said. “Right away.”

“What’s happening, sir?”

Quincy looked back toward the dark corner where the mannequins stood, like the face might turn and look at him.

“I found my missing friend,” he said. “And I think… I think he’s in that store as a mannequin.”

There was a pause on the line, the kind of pause that wasn’t silence so much as judgment forming.

“Sir,” the operator said carefully, “are you saying a mannequin resembles your friend?”

“No,” Quincy said, and the word came out sharper than he meant it to. “I’m saying it looks exactly like him. And when we touched it, it didn’t feel like plastic.”

“Officers will respond when available,” the operator said, a little cooler now. “Can you stay at the location?”

“Yes,” Quincy said, and he hated that he could hear himself begging underneath the yes. “Please.”

He hung up and stared at his phone as if it might tell him the right next step.

Braxton exhaled slowly.

“Let’s not cause a scene,” Braxton said. “We stand here. We wait.”

So they waited, three men trying to look calm while their bodies vibrated with something close to panic.

Minutes dragged. Then an hour. Then another. The store’s music played on, indifferent, and a couple walked past Quincy like he was just another customer with nothing heavy inside him. Quincy called 911 again after two hours, then again after three, and each time he felt the operator’s patience thin a little more, like his fear was an inconvenience.

By the time the patrol car finally rolled up near closing, Quincy’s shirt clung to his back with sweat.

One officer stepped out. White, young, mid-twenties maybe, with the posture of someone who’d already decided what kind of call this was before he even got out of the car. His name tag read CHEN.

“You the ones who called about a mannequin?” the officer asked, and his tone was already halfway to a sigh.

Quincy stood straighter.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “My friend Jaden Pierce has been missing six months. That mannequin in there is him. It looks exactly like him.”

Officer Chen’s eyes flicked over Quincy and his friends, not unkindly, but not with belief either. More like he was measuring how much trouble this would be.

“Show me,” he said.

They went back inside. The bell over the door chimed, cheerful and oblivious.

A woman behind the counter looked up, professionally polite. Her name tag read CHENISE.

“Good evening,” she said, gaze moving quickly over them and landing on the officer with relief. “Officer, is there a problem?”

“These guys say one of your mannequins is their missing friend,” Officer Chen said, and the way he said it made it sound like a prank that had gone too far.

Chenise blinked, confusion creasing her forehead.

“That’s not possible,” she said. “Our mannequins are custom pieces from a professional supplier. Which one?”

Quincy led them back to the men’s section, his heart beating hard enough to make his throat pulse. The mannequin was still there, still posed, still wearing that faint smile that made Quincy want to throw up.

“This one,” Quincy said, and he held up his phone again, the photo of Jaden beside the face. “Look. Same nose. Same scar. Same mole.”

Officer Chen glanced at it, then stepped forward and knocked once on the mannequin’s chest.

It made a hollow sound.

“Fiberglass or resin,” Officer Chen said. “They’re made like that. High-end mannequins can look real.”

Quincy’s voice rose before he could stop it.

“But the face,” he said. “Look closer.”

“Mannequins resemble people sometimes,” Officer Chen said, already turning away. “It’s not illegal for a mannequin to look like somebody.”

Quincy stepped in his path.

“Please,” Quincy said, and his pride hated the word but his love made him say it anyway. “Just test it. Do something. Don’t just knock on it. That’s my brother in there.”

Officer Chen’s expression hardened.

“Sir,” he said, and his voice became official, “we can’t damage private property based on your belief that it resembles someone. I get that you’re upset. But making false reports is a crime.”

“It’s not false,” Quincy said, and his hands were shaking so badly he had to ball them into fists to keep them still. “We touched it. It didn’t feel right.”

Officer Chen looked at Quincy for a long beat, and Quincy could feel the story forming in the officer’s head: grief, denial, young men causing trouble in a place that wasn’t theirs, wasting time.

“Don’t call this in again,” Officer Chen said. “If you keep doing this, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

He walked out before Quincy could find another sentence strong enough to stop him.

Quincy stood there, stunned, the air around him suddenly thin and sharp.

Chenise stepped closer, cautious.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she sounded sincere in a way that almost made it worse. “I can see why you think there’s a resemblance. But these are… they’re designed to be lifelike. We’ve had people say things like this before.”

Quincy’s eyes burned.

“It’s not just resemblance,” he said. “It’s him.”

Other customers were staring now, their faces curious and uncomfortable, like they’d stumbled into something they didn’t want to touch.

A security guard appeared, large and calm, with the kind of presence that didn’t need to raise its voice. His name tag read CARLTON.

“Sir,” Carlton said, steady, “I’m going to need you to lower your voice.”

Quincy swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” Quincy said. “I’m trying to find my friend.”

Then another voice cut through, smooth and confident.

“What’s happening back here?”

Quincy turned and saw Dominic Rossi for the first time in person, and even if Quincy hadn’t known his name, he would’ve recognized the type. Mid-fifties, silver hair styled like he cared about mirrors, suit tailored so perfectly it looked like it grew on him. He moved like the store belonged to him because it did.

Chenise spoke quickly, relieved to hand the problem to the man with power.

“These young men believe one of the mannequins resembles their missing friend,” she said.

Dominic Rossi stepped closer, eyes soft with practiced sympathy. He looked at Quincy’s phone, then at the mannequin, and he gave a small, understanding nod, like he’d seen human pain before and knew how to package his response.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Dominic said gently. “Truly. Losing someone is… it can make the world feel unreal.”

Quincy’s jaw tightened.

“He’s not a loss,” Quincy said. “He’s missing. And that’s him.”

Dominic’s gaze stayed kind, but Quincy felt something colder underneath it, like a hand on a shoulder that was guiding you away from a door you weren’t allowed to open.

“These mannequins,” Dominic said, “are custom imports from Milan. Very expensive. Very rare. They are not, I assure you, human beings.”

“Then prove it,” Quincy said, and his voice cracked on the last word. “If you’re so sure, prove it.”

For a second Dominic’s expression flickered, the warmth slipping. Then it returned, polished and controlled, but the temperature dropped.

“You’re disrupting my business,” Dominic said. “You’re upsetting my customers. I’ve listened, I’ve offered my condolences, and now I’m asking you politely to leave.”

Quincy looked at the mannequin again, at that slight smile, and something in him broke clean in two.

“We just want the truth,” Quincy said.

Dominic’s voice became flat.

“The truth,” he said, “is that you are harassing my store. You are banned from this location. All three of you. Permanently. If you return, I will press trespassing charges. Do you understand?”

Carlton stepped in closer, not aggressive, just unmovable. Quincy knew what it meant. He knew how fast the story could turn on him outside, how quickly the word trouble could be attached to his name, how little room there was for men like him to be mistaken without punishment.

He nodded once, because what else could he do.

They were escorted out.

Outside on the sidewalk, the sun hit Quincy’s face like nothing had happened. Cars passed. People carried shopping bags. The world kept moving.

Quincy stared back at the windows of Rossi Couture and felt his chest fill with a grief so sharp it almost felt like rage.

Braxton kicked at the curb, helpless.

“They didn’t even look,” Braxton muttered.

Devonte’s eyes were glossy, but his voice was steady.

“We can’t call again,” Devonte said. “Not like that. They’ll say we’re lying. They’ll make it about us.”

Quincy called anyway, because love made him stubborn.

This time the response was immediate and irritated.

“Sir,” the voice said, “Officer Chen already responded and determined there is no issue. If you continue calling, you will be charged with filing false reports. This is your warning.”

The line went dead.

Quincy stared at the phone until the screen dimmed, then slipped it back into his pocket like it weighed a hundred pounds.

Nobody believed them.

On the drive home, the Alabama countryside rolled past like a film Quincy couldn’t focus on. Pine trees. Long stretches of road. The occasional church with a white steeple and a small parking lot. The kind of landscape that looked peaceful until you remembered how easy it was to disappear in it.

Quincy sat in the passenger seat of his own life and felt like he’d left his body back in that corner of the store.

He knew what he’d seen.

He knew what he’d felt.

And he also knew, in the quiet way the truth sometimes came, that nobody was going to save Jaden for them.

Two weeks passed, and they were the longest two weeks Quincy could remember. He went to work at the garage, changed oil, rotated tires, pretended to listen when customers complained about rattling sounds and brake lights. He laughed at the jokes he was supposed to laugh at. He slept, sort of, but his dreams were full of mannequins lined up in darkness, faces turning toward him, mouths frozen mid-sentence.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the crooked nose, the scar, the mole.

He tried to talk himself out of it. He tried to tell himself grief made you see things. That hope could turn into hallucination. That his brain was hungry for an ending and was trying to create one out of whatever it could grab.

But then he’d remember the warmth.

He’d remember the wrongness of the texture.

And he’d feel sick all over again.

On a Sunday afternoon, when the sky was the flat bright blue Alabama sometimes wore like a mask, Quincy drove to Mon’nique Pierce’s house.

He hadn’t been there since the week after Jaden vanished, when they’d sat at her kitchen table and gone over phone records and timelines like if they looked hard enough, time would reverse itself out of pity. Back then Mon’nique had been raw, furious, frantic. Now, six months later, she looked quieter, but not healed. Like a candle that had burned down too low but still refused to go out.

Her house was modest and neat, the yard trimmed, the porch swept. A faded wind chime hung near the door, tapping softly in the breeze.

She opened the door and for a second her face lit up, reflexive hope flaring like a match.

“Quincy,” she said. “Baby, come on in.”

Then she saw his expression and the light went out.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, voice dropping into something careful.

Inside, the house was full of Jaden in a way that made Quincy’s throat tighten. Photos on the walls, on the shelves, on the fridge. Jaden in a cap and gown. Jaden in a thrifted suit, smiling like he owned the world. Jaden as a kid with missing teeth and scraped knees. The air smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and something sweet, like the perfume Mon’nique wore to church.

They sat at the kitchen table, the same table where Jaden and Quincy had done homework as kids, elbows pressed close, whispering about dreams too big for their town.

Mon’nique made tea. She always did when something was heavy, like warm hands could convince grief to soften.

Quincy wrapped his fingers around the mug but didn’t drink.

Mon’nique watched him, eyes steady, like a nurse waiting for a patient to finally tell the truth.

“Just tell me,” she said.

So Quincy did.

He told her about the monthly trip into Demopoulos. About deciding to check out Rossi Couture. About walking to the back and seeing the mannequin. About the crooked nose. The scar. The mole. About holding up Jaden’s photo and feeling his body go cold because there was no difference. About Devonte touching the face and jerking back. About the warmth. The wrong texture. About calling 911 and waiting for hours. About the officer knocking on the mannequin’s chest like that was proof. About being banned. About being threatened with arrest.

He watched Mon’nique’s face as he spoke. Watched the disbelief try to rise, then collapse under the weight of details only a mother and a best friend would know.

Tears slid down her cheeks without sound.

When Quincy finished, silence settled over the table like dust.

Mon’nique stared at the steam rising from her tea as if she could read something in it.

“You really believe it’s him,” she said, and it wasn’t a question so much as her naming the shape of what was happening.

Quincy’s eyes burned.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I know it’s him. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But I know.”

Mon’nique’s hands trembled. She set her mug down carefully, like if she moved too fast she’d shatter.

She stood and walked to a cabinet, pulled out a thick folder, and laid it on the table between them.

Inside were the paper bones of the last six months. Missing person reports. Call logs. Notes from the private investigator she’d hired until she couldn’t afford him anymore. Copies of emails she’d sent to anyone with a badge or a title. Newspaper clippings. Photos printed out and highlighted like someone could be found through ink.

“They told me he left,” Mon’nique said, and her voice sounded like it had scraped itself raw over the months. “They said he went to Atlanta or New York, chasing work. They said adults can disappear if they want to. Like my baby just stopped being my baby because he turned twenty-four.”

She looked up at Quincy, eyes wet but steady.

“Jaden called me every day,” she said. “Every single day. He called me from work, he called me after shoots, he called me when he was feeling down, he called me when he was excited. Twenty-four years of calls, Quincy. And then nothing.”

She swallowed, jaw tight.

“Mothers know,” she whispered. “We know when something is wrong.”

Quincy nodded, because he had no words big enough.

Mon’nique took a shaky breath and straightened her shoulders, and Quincy recognized that posture. It was the same way she’d stood when she raised Jaden alone, when she worked double shifts, when she showed up to school meetings in scrubs and still made it clear she was not a woman to dismiss.

“What if I go to the store,” she said.

Quincy’s stomach clenched.

“What?” he asked.

“As a customer,” Mon’nique said. “They don’t know me. They banned you, not me. I go in, I look for myself. I confirm what you saw. And I don’t cause a scene. I get proof.”

Quincy’s heart pounded.

“Miss Mon’nique,” he said, and he hated how small his voice sounded, “that man runs that store. He’s connected. If you go in there alone…”

Mon’nique’s gaze didn’t flinch.

“I’ve been alone for six months,” she said softly. “Alone with this hole. Alone with police who don’t call back. Alone with people telling me to move on. If my baby is in that store, I’m going to look him in the face.”

Quincy nodded, slow.

“When?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” Mon’nique said. “I’m taking a personal day. You drive me, but you don’t go in. You stay out of sight.”

Quincy’s throat tightened.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”

The next morning, the sky was overcast, the kind of gray that made everything look flatter and quieter. Quincy parked two blocks away, where the street changed from boutique windows to older brick buildings with faded paint. He kept the truck engine off, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles ached.

Mon’nique sat in the passenger seat wearing her church clothes, navy dress, pearl necklace, hair neat. She looked like a woman who belonged anywhere she decided she belonged.

She took a slow breath.

“Pray for me,” she said.

“You got this,” Quincy whispered.

Mon’nique stepped out and walked toward Rossi Couture with her chin up.

Quincy watched until she disappeared around the corner, then sat alone with his fear, staring at the empty street like he could will time to move faster.

Inside the store, the bell chimed.

Chenise greeted Mon’nique warmly.

“Good morning,” she said. “Welcome to Rossi Couture. Can I help you find something?”

Mon’nique smiled politely, the way nurses smiled at difficult patients.

“Just browsing,” she said. “Thank you.”

She moved through the front displays slowly, touching fabrics like she was interested, pausing at price tags like she was considering, letting minutes pass so she wouldn’t look like a woman on a mission. Her heart hammered anyway. She could feel it in her throat, in her fingertips.

After fifteen minutes, she drifted toward the back.

Men’s collection. Clearance. Dimmer lights. A corner that felt like it didn’t want attention.

Then her eyes landed on the mannequin in the charcoal-gray suit.

Her world stopped.

For a second, she didn’t breathe.

It was her son.

Not resemblance. Not almost. Not close enough to make a mother doubt herself.

It was the face she’d held when it was newborn and furious and perfect. The face she’d kissed with bedtime prayers. The face she’d watched turn from boy to man. The face she’d searched for in crowds, in stores, in photos online, in every stranger that walked past her like she was invisible.

The crooked nose. She was there the day it broke, when Jaden came flying off his bike and hit the pavement hard enough to make her stomach drop. The scar above the eyebrow from chickenpox, when he’d scratched and scratched no matter how many times she told him to stop. The mole on the left cheek, the beauty mark she used to kiss like it was a button she could press to bring him back.

Mon’nique’s knees went weak.

She grabbed a nearby clothing rack to steady herself, fingers clenching metal.

A sound tried to rise in her throat, a scream, a sob, the kind of noise a mother makes when the world finally admits it has been cruel.

She swallowed it down.

She forced herself to move closer like she was just another customer admiring a display.

She pretended to examine the suit, smoothing the lapel with careful fingers, leaning in close enough to study the surface.

The mannequin’s skin had a slight sheen, but it wasn’t the cheap shine of plastic. It looked coated. Sealed. Treated.

Mon’nique reached up and adjusted the collar, giving herself a reason to touch.

Her fingertips brushed the neck.

Warmth.

Not hot, not alive the way skin was alive, but warm enough to make her blood turn to ice. The surface gave under her touch in a way plastic didn’t. The texture under the coating was not empty, not smooth synthetic. It felt like something that had once belonged to a person.

Mon’nique pulled her hand back fast, but her face stayed calm because she had spent decades learning how to keep calm when everything inside her wanted to fall apart.

She took out her phone and pretended to text.

She took photos instead.

Angles. Profile. Close enough to catch the scar, the mole, the tilt of the nose, but not so close that anyone could accuse her of acting strange. She stepped back, glanced at the other mannequins like she was browsing, then moved to the women’s section and picked up a scarf she didn’t want, just so she could buy something and leave looking like a normal customer.

At the register, Chenise rang her up.

“Did you find everything okay?” Chenise asked.

“Yes,” Mon’nique said, voice steady in a way that surprised even her. “Beautiful store. Thank you.”

She walked out.

She made it around the corner, two blocks away, and then her body betrayed her.

She climbed into Quincy’s truck, closed the door, and collapsed into sobs so violent Quincy didn’t even know how to hold her at first. It was like she was breaking apart cell by cell. Like six months of hope was draining out of her in one unbearable rush.

Quincy pulled her close, his own eyes burning, throat tight.

When she finally found enough breath for words, Mon’nique lifted her face.

“That’s my son,” she whispered. “That’s Jaden.”

Quincy’s vision blurred.

“Oh God,” Mon’nique said, and her voice sounded like a child’s for the first time. “What did they do to my baby?”

That afternoon, they sat at her kitchen table again, photos spread out like evidence on a crime show, but this wasn’t television. This was their lives.

Mon’nique stared at the images on her phone, the face that looked back at her from under a glossy surface.

“I can’t go to the police again and let them laugh,” she said, voice quiet but iron underneath. “They’ll say it’s a mannequin. They’ll say I’m grieving. They’ll say I’m confused.”

Quincy’s jaw clenched.

“They already threatened me,” he said. “They told me if I call again I’m going to jail.”

Mon’nique sat back, eyes narrowing as her mind moved, searching.

“What if it’s not just Jaden,” Quincy said suddenly.

Mon’nique looked at him.

Dominic Rossi, Quincy thought, wasn’t some random boutique owner who’d appeared out of nowhere. He’d been doing shows for years. He’d hosted spring showcases and holiday galas and charity events at the convention center. Jaden was not the first young man in Alabama to dream of getting out through fashion, through a camera, through a runway.

“What if there are other missing models,” Quincy said. “Other families. If there’s a pattern, they can’t ignore it.”

Mon’nique’s eyes sharpened.

“A pattern,” she repeated, and the word felt like a key turning.

She opened her laptop.

The internet wasn’t kind, but it was wide. It held archives and old news clips and Facebook posts from mothers who never stopped typing their sons’ names into search bars.

They searched for hours. Missing persons groups. Local news sites. State databases. Old posts shared and reshared until the photos blurred.

They found them one by one, like stepping stones across a river of grief.

Eight other young Black men, ages twenty-two to twenty-nine. All aspiring models. All attended fashion events in Demopoulos between 2014 and 2018. All vanished shortly after.

Trey Morrison, twenty-five, disappeared June 2016 after a summer showcase.

Khalil Jefferson, twenty-seven, disappeared November 2016 after a fall collection event.

Brandon Lawson, twenty-three, disappeared April 2017 after a charity gala.

Preston Hughes, twenty-six, disappeared August 2017 after another showcase.

Tyrese Caldwell, twenty-two, disappeared December 2017 after a holiday event.

Javvon Richards, twenty-eight, disappeared January 2018 after a New Year’s gala.

Devon Montgomery, twenty-nine, disappeared February 2018 after a networking event.

Malik Spencer, twenty-four, disappeared March 2018, the same month as Jaden.

Nine young men.

Nine families.

Nine files that had been closed with the same tired sentence.

Subject likely relocated voluntarily.

Mon’nique sat back, staring at the screen until the words blurred.

“They did this to all of them,” she whispered.

Quincy swallowed.

“We don’t know that,” he said, but his voice didn’t carry conviction anymore.

Mon’nique’s gaze lifted, and it was like something old and fierce woke up inside her.

“We’re going to find out,” she said.

She started messaging families.

At first it felt invasive, like walking into someone else’s grief without knocking. But grief had already broken all the polite rules. Grief didn’t care about manners. Grief only cared about truth.

“My name is Mon’nique Pierce,” she typed again and again. “My son Jaden disappeared after attending a fashion event hosted by Dominic Rossi. I believe I found him inside Rossi Couture. Did your loved one attend an event in Demopoulos?”

Some people didn’t respond.

Some did, cautiously.

Then a mother named Gloria Morrison called.

Gloria’s voice shook through the phone.

“Yes,” she said. “Trey went to Dominic Rossi’s summer showcase in June. He was so excited, Mon’nique. He said it was going to change everything. He never came home.”

Mon’nique’s eyes filled.

“They told you he left,” Mon’nique said softly, because she already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Gloria whispered. “They said he probably went to Atlanta. They said he’s grown. They told me to stop calling.”

Mon’nique closed her eyes.

One by one, the stories came in. Similar enough to feel like the same wound reopening in different bodies. Sons full of hope. An event. A private opportunity. A last known location. A car found. A phone dead. An investigation that ran out of steam before it ever got hot. A mother told to accept the disappearance like it was a lifestyle choice.

Mon’nique asked them to meet.

They gathered in a church meeting room, folding chairs in a circle, coffee on a side table, tissue boxes placed like someone had already anticipated the storm. The room smelled like old hymnals and carpet cleaner, like prayer that had soaked into the walls over decades.

Nine mothers came.

Different ages. Different styles. Different ways of holding themselves. But they shared something that made them look like sisters even if they’d never met. The exhaustion in their eyes. The way hope had turned into a daily battle. The way their hands moved when they spoke, as if reaching for someone they couldn’t touch.

Mon’nique stood in front of them and held up her phone.

“This is my son,” she said. “That mannequin in Rossi Couture. That’s Jaden.”

The room went quiet, the kind of quiet that happens right before something breaks.

Mon’nique showed them the photos. The face. The scar. The mole.

A woman gasped, hand flying to her mouth.

“That looks like Trey’s build,” Gloria whispered, voice trembling.

Another mother leaned forward, eyes narrowing like she was trying to force memory into focus.

“My Khalil had that same height,” Kesha Jefferson murmured. “Same shoulders.”

They went around the circle, one by one, telling stories they’d repeated so many times to police and friends and pastors that the words had started to feel worn, but the pain never got dull.

After the last mother spoke, Mon’nique’s voice was quiet but clear.

“Alone, they ignore us,” she said. “Together, they can’t.”

They made a plan.

They documented every closed case. Every call. Every dismissal. They wrote down names, dates, officers, the exact phrases used to minimize them. They printed photos of their sons, not as missing posters people glanced at and forgot, but as reminders that these were living, laughing young men with dreams.

They created a petition.

Justice for Our Sons. Investigate Rossi Couture.

They posted it everywhere. Facebook groups. Church pages. Community forums. Instagram stories. Anywhere that would hold a link and a prayer.

And people signed.

Hundreds became thousands. Thousands became tens of thousands. Because even in a world that could be cruel, people still knew right from wrong when it stared at them in a photo.

Local activists shared it. Pastors mentioned it at services. Teachers talked about it in break rooms. Parents saw their own sons in the faces and felt sick.

Channel 5 News called.

Mon’nique almost didn’t answer. The last thing she wanted was to be turned into a headline, a spectacle, a grieving Black woman people could mock from behind screens. But then she looked at Jaden’s photo on the fridge and remembered what silence had gotten her.

Nothing.

So she went.

Under studio lights, Mon’nique sat upright, hands folded, voice controlled in the way nurses learned to control it when a room was on fire and you still had to keep people alive.

The reporter, Sarah Williams, leaned forward.

“Ms. Pierce,” she said, “thank you for being here. Can you tell us what happened to your son?”

Mon’nique told the story without embellishment. The fashion showcase. Dominic Rossi’s invitation. The private consultation. Jaden leaving for the workshop behind the boutique. Jaden never coming home. Police finding the car. Closing the case.

“And now,” Sarah said carefully, “you believe you’ve found him?”

Mon’nique lifted her phone.

The screen behind her showed the side-by-side photo comparison: Jaden smiling on Instagram, and the mannequin in the suit.

Even Sarah’s face changed when she saw it, shock cracking through professionalism.

“What did police say when you reported this?” Sarah asked.

“They said it was coincidence,” Mon’nique said. “They said mannequins look lifelike. They told my son’s best friend to stop calling or he’d be arrested.”

Then eight other mothers appeared on camera, one after another, telling similar stories.

Nine missing Black models. One town. One event organizer. One boutique filled with mannequins.

The broadcast aired at six. Then again at ten. Then it hit the internet and exploded.

People shared it with captions like, This can’t be real. Someone needs to investigate. Why won’t they test the mannequins?

Hashtags trended. Calls flooded city offices. Protesters gathered outside the police station, signs held high under Alabama sun.

Test the mannequins.

Find our sons.

Nine men. Nine families. Zero answers.

By Saturday morning, the Demopoulos Police Chief, Raymond Mitchell, stood at a podium looking like a man who’d aged ten years in three days. He spoke about reopening investigations, about taking allegations seriously, about transparency. Words that sounded good on camera.

But Mon’nique had learned words were cheap.

The real test was action.

That afternoon, two detectives arrived at Rossi Couture with a search warrant and a forensic team.

Detective Lawrence Bennett, mid-forties, eyes tired but sharp, carried himself like someone who’d seen enough evil to stop being surprised by it. Detective Kendra Ross, also in her forties, moved with a kind of focused calm that made Mon’nique feel, for the first time in months, like someone might actually do the job.

A medical examiner, Dr. Marcus Sullivan, brought portable imaging equipment and a laptop.

The store was evacuated.

Yellow tape went up.

Dominic Rossi stood near the front, looking offended more than frightened, like this was a personal insult.

“This is outrageous,” Dominic said smoothly. “A smear campaign started by grieving families. You will find nothing. These mannequins are high-end imports.”

Detective Bennett’s voice stayed flat.

“We’ll see,” he said.

They moved to the back section.

The mannequins stood in their dim corner like they always had, dressed in their suits, posed in confidence.

Dr. Sullivan set up the imaging device, humming and whirring in a way that sounded too modern for the old dread in the air. He positioned the mannequin in the charcoal-gray suit first.

Mon’nique wasn’t there physically, but she got updates every few minutes from the mothers who had gathered outside, clutching hands, whispering prayers.

Inside, the image appeared on the laptop screen.

Silence fell so hard it felt like a drop.

The outline wasn’t hollow.

It wasn’t foam.

It wasn’t empty.

It was unmistakably human.

A spine. Ribs. A pelvis. Arms and hands. A skull with a jawline.

Dr. Sullivan’s face drained.

Detective Bennett’s eyes narrowed into something cold.

“This is not a mannequin,” Dr. Sullivan said quietly. “This contains human remains.”

Dominic Rossi’s confidence cracked.

“That’s impossible,” Dominic said, and for the first time his voice had a tremor. “That’s a mistake.”

Detective Ross stepped forward, hand already reaching for cuffs.

“Dominic Rossi,” she said, “you are under arrest.”

Rossi’s mouth opened, then closed again, like he was searching for the right word to regain control and couldn’t find it.

As he was handcuffed, the room behind him became a crime scene, the kind that would change a town forever.

Dr. Sullivan scanned the remaining mannequins, one after another.

Each time the image appeared, it told the same truth.

Nine.

Not five. Not one.

Nine.

Nine human forms sealed under glossy surfaces, dressed and displayed while their families searched, cried, begged.

Outside, cameras gathered. Reporters shouted questions. People pressed against barriers, eyes wide with the terrible hunger of witnessing something they never imagined could exist.

Detective Bennett made the calls personally.

Mon’nique was at home when her phone rang, Quincy sitting beside her, his knee bouncing like a nervous heartbeat.

Mon’nique answered, breath caught in her throat.

“Ms. Pierce,” Detective Bennett said, and his voice carried a weight that made her stomach drop even before he finished. “We found them. All nine. I’m… I’m very sorry. But you were right.”

Mon’nique made a sound Quincy would never forget. Not a scream like movies. Something deeper, rawer, like the body’s language when the soul doesn’t have words.

Quincy caught her as she folded, held her upright as her grief tried to pull her through the floor.

The other mothers received similar calls.

Gloria Morrison collapsed when she learned Trey had been displayed for over two years.

Kesha Jefferson’s knees gave out when she heard Khalil’s name spoken with finality.

Nine families, nine moments where hope died and truth arrived in its place.

In the days that followed, specialists worked around the clock to identify each victim with certainty. The process was careful and methodical. No theatrics, no shortcuts. Just science doing the job that empathy should’ve demanded months and years ago.

DNA confirmed what the mothers already knew in their bones.

Jaden Pierce.

Trey Morrison.

Khalil Jefferson.

Brandon Lawson.

Preston Hughes.

Tyrese Caldwell.

Javvon Richards.

Devon Montgomery.

Malik Spencer.

Each name returned to its family like a heavy stone.

Each confirmation was both closure and a fresh wound.

The town of Demopoulos changed overnight. The streets looked the same, the courthouse still stood, the river still ran, but the air felt different. Like a secret had been dug up and left exposed.

At the police station, Dominic Rossi sat in an interrogation room, hands cuffed, a lawyer beside him. The camera in the corner recorded everything.

Detective Bennett sat across, Detective Ross near the door.

“Why?” Bennett asked, and his voice wasn’t anger. It was exhaustion, the kind that came from seeing something that broke the rules of what a human being was supposed to do.

Dominic Rossi folded his hands as if he were in a meeting, not under arrest.

“I didn’t do what you think,” Dominic said calmly.

Detective Ross’s eyes sharpened.

“Nine men are dead,” she said. “Their remains were displayed in your store.”

Dominic’s expression didn’t flicker with remorse. If anything, he looked almost offended that they weren’t understanding.

“I preserved them,” he said.

Bennett’s jaw clenched.

“How?” he asked, keeping his voice steady.

Dominic leaned forward, eager, like a man explaining a concept he was proud of.

“I trained in mortuary work years ago,” he said. “I learned preservation. I learned how to keep form. How to maintain appearance. I applied those skills.”

Detective Ross’s voice cut in, sharp.

“You killed them.”

Dominic’s gaze drifted, dreamy.

“They were beautiful,” he said. “They were at their peak. Do you know how rare that is? People spend their lives chasing a version of themselves they never reach. These men had it. For a moment. And then it would’ve faded.”

Bennett stared at him, the disgust in his eyes now unmistakable.

“So you decided you owned that moment,” Bennett said.

Dominic’s smile was small.

“I offered them opportunities,” he said. “They came willingly. They trusted me. And I made them eternal.”

Detective Ross took a slow breath.

“Did anyone help you?” she asked.

“No,” Dominic said, as if it were obvious. “This was mine.”

Bennett stood, chair scraping the floor.

“You’re being charged with nine counts of first-degree murder,” he said. “Desecration of human remains. Operating a criminal enterprise. You will be held without bail.”

Dominic’s expression remained calm as officers led him away. He looked back once, like he expected them to be impressed later.

In the observation room, Quincy and Mon’nique watched through one-way glass. Quincy’s arms were around Mon’nique, holding her as if he could keep her from breaking apart completely.

Mon’nique’s eyes were fixed on Dominic Rossi as if she could burn him with her stare.

“That man,” she whispered, and her voice was so quiet Quincy barely heard it, “looked at my baby like he was a thing.”

Quincy’s throat tightened.

“We’re going to make them remember they were men,” Quincy said. “They were sons.”

The community rallied around the families in the way small towns sometimes did when they couldn’t pretend anymore. Churches offered counseling. Neighbors cooked meals. People who had never spoken to Mon’nique in the grocery store suddenly hugged her like they’d been friends for years. Kindness arrived late, but it arrived.

The trial was scheduled for December.

Three months to prepare.

Three months where the families had to live with the knowledge that for months or years, their sons had been standing in plain sight while the world shopped and strolled and looked away.

The courtroom was packed on the first day, every bench filled, cameras outside, reporters sending updates to a nation that couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or fascinated. Nine families sat in the front row wearing buttons with their sons’ photos, not because they needed to prove anything, but because they refused to let anyone forget who mattered.

Dominic Rossi pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

His defense argued delusion, obsession, a mind unmoored from reality.

The prosecution argued planning. Control. Concealment. The deliberate choices of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and how badly society would judge it.

Experts testified. Words like capacity and intent and disorder floated through the courtroom like smoke, and Mon’nique hated every one of them because they felt like a way to turn her son into a debate.

When Dominic took the stand against his lawyer’s advice, his calmness chilled the room.

He spoke about beauty like it was religion. About preservation like it was kindness. About his victims like they were objects he’d rescued from time.

The prosecutor asked him if he had anything to say to the families.

Dominic looked directly at Mon’nique.

“You should be grateful,” he said evenly. “Your sons are perfect forever.”

The courtroom erupted. A mother cried out. Another stood like she might jump the barrier. Bailiffs moved fast. The judge slammed a gavel and threatened to clear the room.

But the damage was done.

The jury had seen the lack of remorse.

They had heard the arrogance.

They had watched a man talk about murdered sons like they were art pieces.

Four days later, the verdict came.

Guilty.

Count one, guilty.

Count two, guilty.

All nine, guilty.

The room broke open into sobs and shaking hands and strangers holding each other like they’d survived something together.

Mon’nique’s knees buckled, and Quincy caught her, tears streaming down his own face.

They’d been believed.

Too late for the boys.

But not too late to say the truth out loud in a room where it mattered.

Two weeks later, the sentencing hearing brought the families back for the hardest part: speaking directly to the man who had stolen their sons and displayed their absence like décor.

Mon’nique stood first, hands gripping the podium, her voice trembling but strong.

“You took my son,” she said. “My only child. He had dreams. He wanted to walk runways. He wanted to make me proud. He wanted to show the world what a Black boy from Alabama could do. You lured him with promises and you stole his future.”

She swallowed, tears sliding down her face.

“You displayed him in your store while I searched,” she said. “While I begged police to look harder. And when his best friend found him, they threatened that boy with arrest. You hid behind your money, your reputation, your connections. The system protected you. Not my son.”

She leaned forward, eyes locked on Dominic.

“And the worst part is you feel nothing,” she said. “No remorse. No shame. You sit there like you did something good. That is what makes you a monster.”

Other mothers spoke. Each story was different in detail, but identical in pain.

When the judge finally spoke, his voice was hard.

“You committed heinous acts,” he said. “You murdered nine young men. You violated their remains. You operated for years without detection while maintaining a respected position in this community. Your lack of remorse is deeply disturbing.”

He sentenced Dominic Rossi to nine consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

“You will die in prison,” the judge said. “You will never harm anyone again.”

As Rossi was led away, he turned his head slightly, lips moving like he still believed the world would one day agree with him.

Outside the courthouse, nine families stood together for a press conference, cameras flashing, microphones thrust forward, a nation watching.

Mon’nique spoke with Quincy beside her.

“Justice was served today,” she said. “But our work isn’t done. These boys were dismissed when they went missing. Their cases were closed without real effort. That must change. We are pushing for reforms. For protocols that don’t treat Black families like nuisances. For investigations that don’t stop after three weeks. For every disappearance to be taken seriously.”

The families returned to the church afterward, their familiar circle of chairs now holding something new in it. Not happiness, not peace, but a kind of purpose carved out of tragedy.

Time moved the way it always did, slow and unstoppable.

Two years later, where Rossi Couture once stood, there was empty land. The building had been torn down, demolished, as if the town needed the physical space gone to breathe again.

The city turned the lot into a memorial park.

Nine granite monuments arranged in a circle.

Nine names.

Nine photos from life, not death.

Trees planted by families. Flowers maintained by volunteers. Benches for quiet reflection.

They called it the Garden of Nine.

At the dedication ceremony, hundreds gathered. The mayor spoke about learning from failure. The police chief spoke about new protocols, about oversight, about no longer closing missing person cases without thorough investigation.

Then Mon’nique stepped to the podium, the wind brushing her dress, sunlight warming her shoulders.

“Two years ago,” she said, voice steady, “my son’s best friend found him by accident. Quincy saw a mannequin and knew. He called police. He begged. He was dismissed. But he didn’t give up.”

She looked out at the crowd, then back at the monuments.

“We organized,” she said. “We found each other. We made noise. We forced the truth into the light. And now we stand here in a garden that should never have had to exist.”

Quincy spoke after her, hands in front of him, fingers laced to keep them from shaking.

“I found my brother by accident,” he said. “And nobody believed me. I felt powerless, because my word meant nothing against a rich man with a nice suit. But I told his mother anyway. And she did what mothers do. She fought.”

He looked at Jaden’s monument, the photo etched in stone.

“Jaden wanted to make it,” Quincy said softly. “He wanted to make his mama proud. He didn’t get that chance. But his memory is changing how we fight for other missing people now.”

They stood together afterward, placing flowers, touching stone, saying names out loud like an act of resistance against forgetting.

Mon’nique rested her hand on Jaden’s monument.

“Rest easy, baby,” she whispered. “Mama made sure you mattered.”

Quincy stood beside her, eyes wet.

“Miss you every day,” he said quietly. “But your name is still here. And we’re still here. And we’re not letting anybody look away again.”

Mon’nique kept her hand on the stone longer than most people could stand to. The granite had warmed under the afternoon sun, and that warmth messed with her mind in a way she didn’t talk about, because it was too easy for people to misunderstand. Warmth was supposed to mean alive. Warmth was supposed to mean you could still fix things. But her son’s name sat there, carved in something that would outlast her, and that was the truth she had to live with now.

Quincy stood beside her, quiet the way he’d learned to be quiet around certain kinds of pain. He’d always been a talker when they were kids, the kind of boy who could turn a flat tire into a story and make it funny by the end. After Jaden disappeared, Quincy’s words got heavier. After the discovery, they turned careful, like he was afraid language itself could betray him.

Around them, the crowd began to thin. People hugged and drifted toward their cars, the way they did after funerals in small towns. Somebody’s aunt pressed leftover cookies into a plastic container. Someone else offered to bring a casserole by later even though Mon’nique didn’t have much of an appetite these days. The pastor lingered near the benches, talking softly to a few mothers who needed one last touch of reassurance before they went back to homes that felt too quiet.

Mon’nique lifted her fingers from the stone and wiped her cheeks, more out of habit than need. She wasn’t crying now. She’d cried enough that day to feel hollow, like the tears had rinsed her out and left her with nothing but bone.

Quincy cleared his throat.

“You want to sit a minute?” he asked.

Mon’nique shook her head slowly.

“If I sit,” she said, voice low, “I’m not sure I’ll stand back up.”

Quincy nodded, understanding. They stayed standing, two silhouettes against the circle of monuments, and Mon’nique watched the wind move through the newly planted trees. The leaves shivered, bright and young, like they didn’t know yet what this place had been built for.

After a while, Quincy stepped back and glanced around, scanning the crowd like he was counting heads out of instinct. He’d started doing that after everything, like his body didn’t trust that people would stay where they were supposed to stay.

A woman approached them, hesitant, holding her phone in both hands like it was a fragile thing.

She looked mid-thirties, hair pulled back, eyes tired. She didn’t look like she belonged in front of a memorial park on a random afternoon, but grief didn’t care about schedules.

“Excuse me,” she said softly, and her voice caught. “Are you Quincy Williams?”

Quincy’s shoulders tightened. He hated how his name had become something people recognized. He hated that it had taken horror for anyone to know him at all.

“Yes,” he said carefully. “That’s me.”

The woman swallowed. Her fingers trembled around her phone.

“My cousin went missing,” she said. “Last month. Birmingham. Police say he probably just left, you know, needed space. But he called his mama every day. Every day. And then… nothing.”

Mon’nique’s gaze sharpened. She didn’t move toward the woman, but something in her posture shifted, like a door opening.

“What’s his name?” Mon’nique asked.

“Derrick,” the woman said. “Derrick Johnson. He’s twenty-six.”

Quincy nodded once, slow.

“You filed the report?” he asked.

“Yes,” the woman said quickly. “We filed. We called. We keep calling. They keep telling us to wait.”

Mon’nique exchanged a glance with Quincy. It wasn’t a question glance. It was the look of two people who already knew the answer to what waiting meant.

Quincy pulled his phone out, opened a contact list that had grown long and heavy over the last two years.

“Give me your number,” he said. “We’ll talk. Tonight.”

The woman’s eyes filled with relief so sudden it looked like pain.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry to bother you at… at this.”

Mon’nique’s voice softened, but there was steel in it too.

“You’re not bothering us,” she said. “You’re doing what families are supposed to do. You’re refusing to disappear with him.”

The woman nodded, tears slipping down her face, and Quincy wrote her information down like it was sacred.

After she left, Mon’nique exhaled.

“It doesn’t stop,” she murmured.

Quincy stared at his phone screen.

“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t. That’s why we can’t stop either.”

Two years earlier, Quincy never would’ve imagined himself saying something like that. He’d imagined a lot of things, sure. He’d imagined Jaden in New York, walking a runway under lights, calling home to brag, laughing like he always did. He’d imagined Jaden buying his mama a house, not big, but solid, with a porch she could sit on after long shifts. He’d imagined them both leaving the countryside sometimes, coming back on holidays in nicer clothes, telling stories that made their old friends shake their heads in disbelief.

He had not imagined becoming the kind of man who learned the difference between county jurisdiction and state jurisdiction. He had not imagined memorizing the names of detectives in three different cities, or knowing which forms you needed to request body camera footage, or how to speak in a way that made people in uniforms listen without feeling challenged.

He hadn’t imagined that grief could turn into work.

But it had.

After the trial, after the sentencing, after the cameras moved on to the next nightmare and the next headline, life in Demopoulos tried to return to normal. People went back to the diner for breakfast, back to the high school football games on Friday nights, back to church on Sundays where the choir still rose like a promise. The town wanted to forget. Not because it didn’t care, but because remembering hurt, and most people didn’t know what to do with pain that didn’t belong to them.

For Mon’nique and the other mothers, forgetting wasn’t an option. Every time someone’s kid laughed in the grocery store aisle, it sounded like an echo of what they’d lost. Every time the sun hit the driveway at a certain angle, it reminded Mon’nique of Jaden’s car pulling out for the last time, the back end dipping slightly like it always did over the curb.

Quincy stayed close. He fixed things around Mon’nique’s house without being asked. He changed her porch light when it flickered, unclogged the kitchen sink, patched the fence where the dog kept pushing through. Small tasks, small repairs, like he could keep her world from falling apart in ways that were visible, since he couldn’t fix the part that mattered most.

One evening, months after the sentencing, Mon’nique sat at her kitchen table with a folder open in front of her. The folder wasn’t the old missing person folder anymore. That one lived in a box now, still heavy, still painful, but no longer her only proof that her son had existed. This new folder was full of different papers: nonprofit forms, grant applications, community outreach proposals, draft letters to state representatives.

Quincy walked in with two paper bags from the local barbecue place, the smell of smoked meat and sweet sauce filling the kitchen.

“You eat?” he asked, trying to sound casual, like eating was a normal question.

Mon’nique glanced up and gave him a faint smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I’ll try,” she said.

Quincy set the food down and noticed the papers spread across the table like a second life.

“You still working on that?” he asked.

Mon’nique tapped the folder with her finger.

“People keep calling,” she said. “Families. Mothers. Sisters. They hear what happened here and they think maybe we know something. Maybe we know how to make them listen.”

Quincy lowered himself into the chair across from her.

“And do we?” he asked, voice quiet.

Mon’nique held his gaze.

“We do now,” she said.

It wasn’t arrogance. It was experience, earned the hardest way.

Mon’nique had learned that police departments responded faster when you knew what to ask for and how to ask for it. She’d learned that a missing person case didn’t have to drift into the shadows if a family kept a timeline, kept records, kept names, kept pressure. She’d learned that local media could be a lever, that community groups could be a megaphone, that a church could become a headquarters if the pastor had enough backbone and the congregation had enough heart.

She’d learned that people who dismissed one grieving mother might hesitate when nine mothers stood together.

And Quincy had learned something too.

He’d learned what it felt like to be right and still be treated like a liar. He’d learned what it felt like to stand in front of an officer and know, in your soul, that the truth was sitting ten feet away, and still watch that truth be waved off because of who you were and how you looked and what kind of truck you drove.

That lesson had carved itself into him.

It made him angry in ways he didn’t always know how to control. But it also made him determined in a way he couldn’t undo.

So they built something.

Not big at first. Just a name, a phone line, a simple website that a volunteer from church helped them set up. They called it Black Missing Persons Advocacy because they were done pretending the pattern didn’t exist. They were done smoothing the words to make people comfortable.

At first the calls were local. A mother in Montgomery. A sister in Mobile. A cousin in Huntsville. Then the calls spread outward, across state lines, across time zones. People who had been told for months that their loved one probably left voluntarily found the courage to say, out loud, that they didn’t believe it. That they didn’t accept it. That they wanted more than a shrug.

Quincy took the calls when Mon’nique couldn’t. Mon’nique took them when Quincy’s voice started to shake. Sometimes they took them together, sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad and a laptop, writing down names and dates like they were building a map to something the world refused to see.

On some nights, after the calls ended and the house went quiet, Quincy would sit on Mon’nique’s porch and listen to the crickets. Alabama nights had a way of sounding alive even when you felt empty. The hum of insects, the distant bark of a dog, the occasional car passing on the county road.

Mon’nique would join him sometimes, wrapped in a cardigan even in summer, because grief had made her body run cold.

One night, Quincy stared out into the dark and said something he’d never said out loud before.

“I keep thinking,” he murmured, “about that first day. In the store. When I touched his face.”

Mon’nique’s hands tightened around her mug.

“I know,” she whispered.

Quincy swallowed hard.

“I keep thinking,” he said, voice rough, “if I’d done something different. If I’d grabbed him. If I’d knocked it over. If I’d… I don’t know. Made a scene. Would it have changed anything?”

Mon’nique stared into the yard, the shadows shifting under the porch light.

“No,” she said softly. “It would’ve changed who they arrested.”

Quincy’s jaw clenched.

“That’s the part that makes me sick,” he admitted. “They made me feel crazy. Like grief was my only explanation. Like I didn’t know my own brother.”

Mon’nique’s voice hardened.

“You knew,” she said. “And you kept knowing, even when they tried to shame you out of it. That’s why we’re here.”

Quincy’s eyes burned. He blinked hard, staring at the dark until it blurred.

“I miss him,” he said, and it came out plain, like a truth too simple to dress up.

Mon’nique’s breath trembled.

“I know,” she whispered. “Me too.”

Sometimes people asked Quincy what Jaden was like, like they needed the details to make him real beyond the headlines. Quincy would give them the parts that made Jaden human, the parts that weren’t tragedy.

He’d tell them about the time Jaden was nine and tried to cut his own hair before picture day and ended up looking like someone had fought him with scissors. Quincy would tell them how Jaden laughed so hard he cried when Quincy’s aunt slipped on spilled sweet tea at a family cookout and then laughed too, because nobody got hurt and it was funnier once you knew that. He’d tell them how Jaden practiced walking “like a model” in the hallway of his mama’s house, shoulders back, chin up, pretending the cracked linoleum was a runway and the kitchen light was a spotlight.

Mon’nique would add her own memories, softer ones.

How Jaden used to call her at work just to hear her voice. How he’d leave notes on the counter, little jokes, little hearts, as if he’d always known she needed reminders that life could be sweet. How he’d buy her flowers on random Tuesdays from the grocery store because he couldn’t afford roses but he could afford something, and he wanted her to feel seen.

They kept those memories alive on purpose, because grief could turn a person into a case file if you let it. Mon’nique refused that. Quincy refused that.

Jaden wasn’t a mannequin. He wasn’t an image on a screen.

He was a boy who loved old R&B songs and sang off-key while he cooked. He was a man who saved two hundred dollars for a photo shoot because he believed his face could be a ticket out. He was somebody who deserved to be remembered as more than what was done to him.

In the months after the memorial park opened, Demopoulos changed in small, stubborn ways. The police department implemented new procedures, partly because they had to, partly because the whole country had watched them fail. Missing person cases couldn’t be closed as quickly without documented follow-ups. Families were given clearer points of contact. Reports had to include actual investigative steps instead of assumptions. It wasn’t perfect, not even close, but it was different.

The town held community meetings at the civic center where people stood up and admitted things they’d never admitted before. Some apologized for dismissing the mothers. Some said they’d seen the posters and assumed, wrongly, that the boys had just moved away. Some confessed they’d been afraid to speak against a wealthy businessman because money carried weight in a small town like gravity.

Mon’nique listened to those apologies with a face that didn’t give much away. She accepted them sometimes, not because they erased anything, but because holding bitterness had started to feel like carrying a heavy box she didn’t want anymore.

But there were things she didn’t forgive.

She didn’t forgive the officer who threatened Quincy with arrest for calling 911 about his missing best friend. She didn’t forgive the easy dismissal, the lazy assumptions, the way the system had asked her to “let go” before it had even tried.

Some wounds didn’t heal into forgiveness. Some wounds healed into vigilance.

That’s what Mon’nique chose.

One afternoon in late spring, Quincy and Mon’nique drove to Birmingham for a meeting with a state representative. The highway stretched ahead, long and flat, with billboards advertising personal injury attorneys and peach stands and church revivals. Quincy drove with both hands on the wheel, jaw tight the way it always got when he was headed toward a building with security guards and rules.

Mon’nique sat beside him, notes in her lap, eyes focused.

“You okay?” Quincy asked after a few miles.

Mon’nique nodded.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Quincy glanced at her.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said gently.

Mon’nique exhaled and stared out the window at the line of pine trees blurring past.

“I still get nervous,” she admitted. “Walking into those offices. Having to make a case for why our sons deserved effort. Like it’s something we have to sell.”

Quincy’s grip tightened on the wheel.

“We shouldn’t have to,” he said.

“No,” Mon’nique agreed. “But we do. So we will.”

At the meeting, they spoke about policy changes: mandatory timelines for follow-ups, better coordination between jurisdictions, improved training on missing persons cases, community liaison roles for families. Quincy watched Mon’nique speak and felt something close to awe. She wasn’t the woman who had collapsed into sobs in his truck two years ago. That woman still existed inside her, yes, but she wasn’t the only thing inside her anymore.

Mon’nique had learned to turn pain into language that could move people.

That was power.

And power, Quincy realized, was the only thing that scared certain systems into doing right.

After the meeting, they walked out into warm air and bright sunlight, and Quincy felt the old anger rise again.

“All this,” he muttered, gesturing at the courthouse-like building behind them. “All these offices. All these people. And it still took the news to get them to do what they should’ve done in the first place.”

Mon’nique’s eyes narrowed.

“Then we keep shining light,” she said simply. “We don’t let them go back to sleep.”

That summer, Quincy got a call at two in the morning.

He was half asleep on his couch, the TV still on low, some late-night infomercial flickering in the corner. His phone buzzed, and his body snapped awake because he’d trained himself to treat late-night calls like alarms.

He answered.

“Hello?”

A man’s voice came through, shaking.

“Is this… is this Quincy Williams?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Quincy said, sitting up. “Who is this?”

“My name is Marcus,” the voice said. “My little brother’s missing. We’re in Jackson. Mississippi. Police keep telling us he probably ran off. But I saw your story. I saw what you did. I don’t know who else to call.”

Quincy rubbed his face, trying to clear sleep.

“Tell me his name,” Quincy said.

The man swallowed audibly.

“Leon,” he said. “Leon Carter. He’s twenty-three. He went to a club with some friends, and he never came back. They found his car two days later in a lot behind a strip mall. His phone was dead. Police said maybe he got scared of responsibility, like he just… walked away.”

Quincy closed his eyes for a moment, the familiar pattern tightening in his chest.

“Okay,” Quincy said, keeping his voice steady. “I’m going to ask you some questions. You got something to write with?”

“Yes,” Marcus said quickly. “Yeah, I got a pen.”

Quincy walked him through it, step by step, the way Mon’nique had walked him through it when he was still drowning. Timelines. Last known location. Who he was with. Names. Addresses. Where the car was found. Which precinct filed the report. Who the responding officer was.

By the end of the call, Marcus’s voice had steadied slightly, like structure alone could keep him from falling apart.

“Thank you,” Marcus whispered. “Thank you for not making me feel crazy.”

Quincy stared at the wall, the TV still flickering.

“You’re not crazy,” Quincy said. “You’re paying attention. That’s what family does.”

After he hung up, Quincy sat in the dark and felt the old ache bloom again, not just for Jaden, but for every family that had been told to accept silence.

When Mon’nique came into the living room an hour later, she didn’t ask why Quincy was awake. She could tell.

“Another call?” she asked softly.

Quincy nodded.

Mon’nique sat beside him and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll help,” she said.

Quincy looked at her.

“Does it ever feel like,” he began, then stopped, because the truth felt too heavy to say.

Mon’nique waited.

Quincy exhaled.

“Like we’re trying to empty the ocean with a cup,” he finished.

Mon’nique’s lips pressed together.

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

Then her gaze lifted, and her voice firmed.

“But cups fill buckets. Buckets fill barrels. Barrels fill trucks. We do what we can, Quincy. We do what we can with what we got.”

Quincy swallowed hard. He nodded.

Outside, the Alabama night continued, thick and alive, and for a moment Quincy could almost imagine Jaden walking through the door, laughing at them for being so serious, calling his mama and saying he was hungry, asking Quincy if he’d seen his keychain.

But imagination was both a comfort and a knife. Quincy learned to hold it carefully.

In the fall, a college in Tuscaloosa invited Mon’nique to speak to criminal justice students about missing persons advocacy. Quincy came with her, sitting in the back of the lecture hall, watching young faces take notes.

Mon’nique stood at a podium under fluorescent lights and told her story without letting her voice shake.

She spoke about how easy it was for a missing person to become a statistic when the family didn’t have money or connections. She spoke about how certain assumptions that a young adult “probably left voluntarily” could shut down an investigation before it began. She spoke about why documentation mattered, why persistence mattered, why community mattered.

When she finished, the room was quiet in a way Quincy had learned to respect.

A young woman in the front row raised her hand, eyes glossy.

“How did you keep going?” the student asked. “After you knew… after you saw…”

Mon’nique’s throat moved as she swallowed. For a second, she looked like she might break.

Then she steadied herself.

“Because my son mattered,” she said. “And if I stopped, the world would’ve had an easier time pretending he didn’t.”

Quincy felt his chest tighten. He stared down at his hands, remembering how Jaden used to slap him on the shoulder when he got too serious, saying, Man, don’t go all dramatic. Life is short. Laugh.

Life was short.

But the love was long.

After the lecture, a professor approached Mon’nique and Quincy.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly. “And I want you to know… what you’re doing is changing how these students will do their jobs someday.”

Mon’nique nodded, polite, but Quincy could tell she didn’t fully trust the comfort of someday. They had needed change yesterday. They had needed it the night Jaden never came home. They had needed it the first time police shrugged.

Still, Quincy thanked the professor because he’d learned gratitude could coexist with anger.

On the drive back, the sun setting over the highway, Mon’nique stared out the window.

“You ever think about leaving?” Quincy asked, surprising himself with the question.

Mon’nique blinked.

“Leaving where?” she asked.

“Here,” Quincy said. “Demopoulos. Alabama. All of it.”

Mon’nique was quiet for a long moment.

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Sometimes I think about a place where nobody knows my story. Where I can buy groceries without someone looking at me like I’m fragile.”

Quincy nodded, understanding.

“But,” Mon’nique continued, and her voice tightened, “this is where Jaden lived. This is where he laughed. This is where his dreams started. And if I leave, I feel like I’m leaving him.”

Quincy swallowed.

“You’re not,” he said softly. “You carry him.”

Mon’nique looked at him, eyes tired but steady.

“So do you,” she said.

That winter, on the anniversary of Jaden’s disappearance, Mon’nique lit a candle in her kitchen and sat at the table alone. Quincy offered to come over, to sit with her, to not let the day swallow her whole, but Mon’nique said she needed a quiet hour first.

She held her phone and scrolled through old photos, ones she’d taken without thinking they’d become relics. Jaden holding a plate of food at a cookout, grinning. Jaden in a thrift-store suit, practicing poses. Jaden leaning against Quincy’s truck, laughing at something Quincy had said.

Mon’nique set the phone down and stared at the candle flame.

She whispered, like she was speaking into a room that might still hold him.

“I’m still here,” she said. “I’m still fighting.”

The flame wavered, then steadied again.

When Quincy arrived later, carrying a bag of groceries and a bouquet of cheap flowers from the supermarket, Mon’nique didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to. Quincy placed the flowers in a glass on the counter, then sat at the table with her.

They ate quietly for a while, the kind of quiet that wasn’t awkward, just shared.

Then Quincy spoke, voice low.

“I had a dream,” he said.

Mon’nique looked up.

“Jaden?” she asked, already knowing.

Quincy nodded.

“He was mad at me,” Quincy admitted, a faint laugh breaking through his grief. “He was like, Bro, why you crying so much? I’m fine.”

Mon’nique’s mouth trembled.

“Was he smiling?” she asked.

Quincy’s eyes filled.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “He was smiling.”

Mon’nique closed her eyes, and a single tear slid down her cheek.

“That’s all I want,” she said quietly. “To see him smiling again. Even if it’s just in a dream.”

Quincy reached across the table and took her hand.

They sat like that, fingers clasped, candle flickering, the Alabama night pressing against the windows, and for a moment the grief felt less like drowning and more like something they could carry together.

Outside, the world kept moving, as it always did. Cars drove down dark roads. Porch lights clicked on. Somewhere a dog barked at nothing. Somewhere a mother stared at her phone waiting for a call that didn’t come.

Quincy knew they couldn’t save everyone.

But he also knew something he hadn’t known before Jaden disappeared.

Silence was a choice.

And they were done choosing it.

The next morning, Quincy woke up before the sun and lay there staring at the ceiling like it might give him answers. The house was quiet, the kind of quiet that used to feel peaceful before everything changed. Now it felt like a warning, like the world was holding its breath. He finally got up, pulled on a hoodie, and drove into town while the sky was still a dull gray.

Their little office wasn’t really an office, not the kind you saw on TV with glass walls and leather chairs. It was two rooms above a barbershop on Main Street, the paint peeling on the stairwell and the air always smelling faintly like hair oil and old wood. Somebody from church had donated a used desk, a printer that jammed if you looked at it wrong, and a coffee maker that brewed something strong enough to wake the dead. Quincy unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping on the lights one by one.

The walls were covered in what they called the map, even though it wasn’t one map. It was a patchwork of notes and counties and names, a collage of cases and phone numbers and timelines taped up with the kind of care people usually reserved for family photos. The first time Quincy put Jaden’s picture on that wall, his hands had shaken. Now he touched it every morning anyway, just once, like a quiet promise.

His phone buzzed before he could even set his keys down.

It was the woman from the memorial park, the cousin of Derrick Johnson.

Quincy answered immediately.

“Hey,” he said, voice low. “You alright?”

She didn’t sound alright.

“They told us to stop calling,” she said, breathless. “They said if we keep bothering them, they’ll handle it less. Like we’re hurting our own case.”

Quincy closed his eyes for a second and let the familiar anger wash through him. He didn’t let it spill into his voice.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You’re not hurting anything by asking questions about your own family. You keep it respectful, you keep it documented, and you don’t let them shame you into silence.”

There was a pause. He heard her sniff.

“What do we do today?” she asked.

Quincy looked at the map on the wall, then at the notepad on his desk.

“You’re going to do two things,” he said. “First, you’re going to write down every name you spoke to, every time you called, and what they said. Second, you’re going to ask for a supervisor and you’re going to say one sentence, calm and clear.”

“What sentence?” she whispered.

Quincy leaned forward, voice steady.

“You say, ‘I am requesting an update on an active missing person report, and I need it documented that I asked.’ That’s it. No arguing. No pleading. Just that.”

He heard her breathe in, like she was bracing herself.

“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay. Thank you.”

“You call me back after,” Quincy said. “No matter what they say.”

When he hung up, he sat down at the desk and stared at the wall. He thought about how many families had been trained, by tone and posture and paperwork, to believe they were asking for too much. He thought about how grief made people polite even when they should have been loud. Then he thought about Mon’nique, walking into Rossi Couture in her church dress, steady as a blade, and he remembered that politeness could be a strategy too, when it came from strength.

The door opened a few minutes later and Mon’nique walked in with a paper bag from the diner down the street. She was wearing a navy sweater, hair pulled back, her face composed in the way it always got when she was about to work.

“You beat me here,” she said, setting the bag down.

Quincy shrugged.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.

Mon’nique didn’t ask why. She knew.

They ate in silence for a moment, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty. It was full of things they didn’t have to say out loud anymore.

Then Mon’nique opened her laptop and pulled up the message thread from the man in Mississippi, Marcus, the one who’d called about Leon Carter. She’d asked him to email everything he had, because grief could scramble details and paperwork didn’t forget. The email sat there, long and messy, full of fear and frustration.

Mon’nique read it twice, lips pressed together.

“Jackson,” she murmured. “Different state, same story.”

Quincy swallowed.

“He said they found the car behind a strip mall,” Quincy said. “Phone dead. Police acting like it’s nothing.”

Mon’nique’s eyes hardened.

“We’re going,” she said.

Quincy blinked.

“We have cases here,” he started, but he already knew she was right.

Mon’nique looked at him like a mother who had made a decision a long time ago and didn’t need permission.

“We can make calls from anywhere,” she said. “But Marcus needs somebody in the room with him. Somebody who knows what it feels like when the system tries to talk you out of your own instincts.”

Quincy nodded slowly, feeling the weight of it settle into his bones.

“Okay,” he said. “We go.”

They left the office in the late morning, Mon’nique locking the door behind them like she was locking something sacred inside. The barbershop downstairs was alive with talk and laughter, clippers buzzing, men arguing about football like the world hadn’t cracked open. Quincy felt the strange divide between ordinary life and the kind of life that made you live with your phone always charged.

The drive to Jackson was long and flat, the landscape shifting from Alabama’s pine-heavy stretches into Mississippi’s wide open roads. Quincy drove and Mon’nique sat with a folder in her lap, reviewing notes like they were studying for an exam. They stopped at a gas station near Meridian where the coffee tasted burnt and the cashier called everyone “baby” like it was a blessing.

In the parking lot, Quincy leaned against the truck and watched Mon’nique take a slow breath.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

Mon’nique stared out at the highway.

“I hate this part,” she admitted. “The part where you walk into someone else’s nightmare and you don’t know if you’re bringing them hope or just more pain.”

Quincy’s throat tightened.

“We bring them help,” he said. “That’s what we bring.”

Mon’nique nodded, but her eyes looked far away.

When they reached Jackson, Marcus met them outside a small brick house with a sagging porch. He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days, and his hands shook when he shook Mon’nique’s hand.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, voice rough. “I didn’t think anybody would.”

Mon’nique’s face softened just enough to feel human.

“You did the right thing calling,” she said. “Tell me where you’re at right now.”

Marcus led them inside. The living room was full of Leon, without Leon being there. Photos on the wall, a hoodie draped over the couch, a pair of sneakers by the door like he might walk in and kick them off any minute. A woman sat at the kitchen table, staring at her phone like it was a lifeline.

“That’s my mama,” Marcus said softly. “She hasn’t eaten.”

Mon’nique walked over, slow and respectful, like you approached a skittish animal.

“Ms. Carter,” she said gently.

The woman looked up. Her eyes were red, but the fire in them was still alive.

“Yes?” she whispered.

“My name is Mon’nique Pierce,” Mon’nique said. “This is Quincy Williams. We’re here because your family called us. We’re going to help you push for answers, and we’re going to do it in a way they can’t ignore.”

Ms. Carter’s mouth trembled. She tried to speak and couldn’t. Then she covered her face and sobbed, the kind of sob that came from a place deeper than words.

Quincy stood back, not because he didn’t care, but because he knew mothers sometimes needed space to fall apart before they could stand again. Marcus moved to his mother’s side, rubbing her shoulders, whispering, “I got you, Mama,” like he could hold her together with his hands.

Later, when Ms. Carter had sipped a little water and her breathing steadied, they went over everything. Marcus laid out the timeline, the club, the last text, the car, the police response. Quincy listened the way he’d learned to listen, not just to the facts but to the holes in the story where the fear lived.

Mon’nique asked calm questions, precise ones, the kind that made chaos line up into something you could act on.

“Who was the responding officer?” she asked.

“What precinct?” she asked.

“Did they take the missing person report immediately?” she asked.

“Did they tell you to wait?” she asked.

Every time Ms. Carter answered yes to something that sounded wrong, Mon’nique’s eyes sharpened like she was filing it away.

That afternoon, they went with Marcus to the precinct. Quincy hated walking into police stations, hated the way fluorescent lights made everything look colder. He hated the way grief looked out of place in buildings designed for procedure.

At the front desk, an officer barely glanced up when they approached. His face carried that familiar expression Quincy recognized from Demopoulos, the look of someone already deciding your urgency didn’t count.

“We’re here about a missing person report,” Marcus said, trying to keep his voice steady.

The officer sighed like he’d been interrupted.

“Name?” he asked.

“Leon Carter,” Marcus said. “Report was filed four days ago.”

The officer typed lazily, then shrugged.

“It’s still open,” he said. “We’ll call if we find anything.”

Mon’nique leaned forward slightly, her posture polite, her voice calm.

“Can you tell us what steps have been taken so far?” she asked.

The officer glanced at her, annoyed.

“Ma’am, these things take time,” he said. “Adults leave. Sometimes they don’t want to be found.”

Quincy felt his jaw clench. He forced himself to breathe.

Mon’nique didn’t flinch.

“I understand cases take time,” she said evenly. “I’m asking what steps have been taken. It’s a fair question.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed, but he couldn’t quite dismiss her without looking like a jerk, not with her standing there composed, not with Quincy and Marcus beside her, not with the quiet attention of other people in the lobby.

He clicked around on the screen, then said, grudgingly, “We put out a BOLO.”

Mon’nique nodded once.

“And have you checked local hospitals, jails, shelters?” she asked.

The officer’s mouth tightened.

“That’s not always necessary,” he muttered.

Mon’nique’s voice stayed soft, but it carried.

“It’s necessary when a family is telling you their loved one has vanished under unusual circumstances,” she said. “I’d like to speak to the supervisor on duty.”

The officer started to argue, then stopped. Something in Mon’nique’s tone made it clear she wasn’t leaving.

A supervisor came out, a woman in her forties with tired eyes and a badge that looked heavy. She listened as Mon’nique explained, not emotional, not dramatic, just clear. Quincy watched the supervisor’s expression shift, the way people’s faces did when they realized you weren’t there to beg, you were there to document.

“I’m Lieutenant Harris,” the woman said finally. “Let’s step into my office.”

Inside the office, Mon’nique laid out the case again, and Quincy added details about how quickly missing person cases could go cold when assumptions took over. Marcus sat rigid in his chair, hands clenched, trying not to look like he was pleading even though pleading was all he wanted to do.

Lieutenant Harris listened longer than Quincy expected. She didn’t promise miracles. She didn’t say the perfect words. But she did something Quincy recognized as rare.

She took them seriously.

“I’ll assign someone to do a hospital and jail sweep,” she said. “Today. And I’ll get someone to follow up with the people he was last seen with. I can’t promise outcomes, but I can promise effort.”

Ms. Carter’s eyes filled with tears again, but this time there was relief mixed in, like someone had opened a window in a room she’d been suffocating in.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Quincy watched Lieutenant Harris, trying to decide if this was genuine or just damage control. He couldn’t tell. Maybe it didn’t matter. Effort was effort, and sometimes effort was the difference between a family getting their person back or never seeing them again.

That evening, back at the house, Mon’nique’s phone buzzed. She answered, listened, and her face changed.

Quincy’s stomach dropped. He knew that look.

Mon’nique covered the phone and looked at Marcus.

“They found him,” she said softly.

Marcus stared at her like he hadn’t understood the words.

“What?” he whispered.

Mon’nique’s voice stayed steady.

“He’s alive,” she said. “He’s in the county jail. Booked under a wrong spelling of his name after an incident. They didn’t connect him to the missing report.”

For a second, nobody moved. Like their bodies needed permission to believe it.

Then Ms. Carter let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and she slid out of her chair, knees giving out, hands pressed to her mouth.

“My baby,” she choked. “My baby’s alive.”

Marcus ran to her, crying openly now, not caring who saw.

Quincy stood in the doorway to the kitchen and felt his own eyes burn. Relief was a strange kind of pain when you lived in a world where relief didn’t come often.

Mon’nique exhaled slowly and looked at Quincy, and for a moment her face cracked, letting the raw emotion show beneath the composure.

“This is why,” she whispered.

Quincy nodded, throat too tight for words.

They drove to the jail together. The building was ugly, concrete and bright lights, the kind of place that made you feel small. Ms. Carter clutched her purse like it was a shield, trembling with every step.

When Leon finally walked out into the visiting area, wearing a jail jumpsuit, his face bruised, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, Ms. Carter broke. She pressed her hands to the glass and cried his name like prayer.

Leon stared at her for a second, then his face crumpled.

“Mama,” he mouthed, and even through the glass Quincy could see the shame and confusion and relief tangled together in him.

Later, after paperwork and explanations and the slow process of getting him released, Leon sat in the car with his mother and brother and kept repeating the same sentence like he couldn’t believe it.

“I didn’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t know y’all were looking. I didn’t know anybody cared.”

Ms. Carter grabbed his hand so tight it looked like she was afraid he’d vanish again.

“Don’t you ever say that,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t you ever.”

On the drive back to Alabama the next morning, Mon’nique was quiet. Quincy let her be quiet until the miles stretched long enough that silence started to feel heavy.

“You did good,” Quincy said finally.

Mon’nique stared out the window at the passing trees.

“We did what should’ve been done on day one,” she said. “And it still took outsiders showing up for them to do it.”

Quincy nodded, jaw tight.

“Yeah,” he said. “But he’s alive.”

Mon’nique blinked slowly, like she was letting that truth sink into her bones.

“He’s alive,” she repeated, quieter. “That matters.”

They crossed back into Alabama under a pale afternoon sky. Quincy’s phone buzzed with messages the whole way. A mother in Mobile asking for advice. A cousin in Birmingham saying the police wouldn’t return calls. The woman with Derrick Johnson calling again, voice shaking.

Quincy answered her on speaker while Mon’nique listened, pen ready.

“They finally let me talk to a supervisor,” the woman said. “They were mad, but they did it. They wrote it down like you said.”

Quincy nodded even though she couldn’t see it.

“Good,” he said. “That’s how you do it.”

She hesitated.

“But I’m scared,” she admitted. “I feel like they’re going to punish us for pushing.”

Mon’nique leaned toward the phone, her voice soft but unbreakable.

“Baby,” she said, “they’ve been punishing families for staying quiet too. Quiet doesn’t protect you. Documentation does. Community does. We’re here.”

The woman let out a shaky breath.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. Thank you.”

When the call ended, Quincy gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road ahead.

“You feel that?” he asked.

Mon’nique’s eyes stayed forward.

“Yeah,” she said. “The hope.”

Quincy swallowed.

“It scares me sometimes,” he admitted. “Hope. Because it makes the fall hurt worse when it doesn’t work out.”

Mon’nique turned to look at him, and her gaze was tired but steady.

“Hope is not a promise,” she said. “It’s a choice. We choose it because we have to. Because without it, they win.”

Quincy nodded, blinking hard.

Back in Demopoulos, the barbershop downstairs was closing when they returned to the office. The neon sign in the window buzzed faintly. Quincy unlocked the door, and they stepped back into the room with the map and the notes and the names.

Mon’nique walked to the wall and touched Jaden’s photo, just once, like always. Then she turned and picked up her pen.

“We keep going,” she said.

Quincy sat down at the desk, pulled the notepad toward him, and opened his phone to the next message waiting.

Outside, the town settled into night. Porch lights flicked on. A train horn sounded faint in the distance. Somewhere a mother stared at her phone. Somewhere a family argued with a dispatcher. Somewhere a detective shrugged and decided a case wasn’t urgent.

Inside that small office above a barbershop, Quincy and Mon’nique did what they’d learned to do the hard way.

They refused to let people disappear quietly.

They wrote the names down.

They made the calls.

They kept the pressure on.

And even when the night felt heavy, even when grief tried to drag them back into the old darkness, they kept choosing what the system had never offered them for free.

They kept choosing effort.

They kept choosing love.

They kept choosing to believe what families knew in their bones.

That missing didn’t mean gone.

Not yet.

Not if somebody was willing to fight.