For weeks, Jonathan Pierce lived in a kind of exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. Every morning, he woke hoping the nightmare was over—only to remember his son Owen was still missing. Chicago felt bigger than ever, louder, colder, impossible to search. Jonathan walked block after block, missing-person flyers crumpled in his hands, taping them to storefront windows, bus stops, and streetlights, as if that act alone kept him standing.
At first, people offered sympathy. The police asked questions. Neighbors promised to keep an eye out. But as days stretched into a month, the urgency faded everywhere except inside Jonathan’s chest. The world was moving on. He couldn’t.
One gray afternoon, while posting another flyer near a row of unfinished buildings, he felt a tug on his coat. A little girl stood there, her gaze serious beyond her years. She pointed at Owen’s photo and said something that made Jonathan’s heart stop: she knew the boy. She said he was at her home.
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