Elijah sat on the small metal bench on his back second-story balcony overlooking the green yard. Now that it was October, the grass would soon die, the leaves having already changed colors to a burn orange and deep red. He'd watched the sunrise, his favorite part of the day. The city was quiet; the air was crisp and peaceful, and Elijah could think uninterrupted.

And he had been thinking. All damn night. Elijah already knew what he was going to do. It was just finding the courage to do it. The number left in the message was already in his phone after he grabbed it from Madeline's phone several hours earlier.

The sun hadn't risen yet where Daniel Grayson slept, but since the message had prevented Elijah from being able to rest, he doubt Daniel had gotten much sleep either. No, he didn't know what the post was about, but he knew it existed, and that alone would plague anyone's sleep. The not knowing. The uncertainty of your future.

Elijah had asked himself many questions before and after sobriety. He found some answers, some answers found him, and others would continually hang in the air, taunting him. The biggest question he'd asked himself time and time again was why Harrison Fox couldn't or refused to love him. It was a question Elijah assumed would go unanswered once the man found his end, and Elijah had accepted that.

It turned out Elijah didn't need Harrison to find his truth. He needed to reconnect with his family. That truth stung like razor blades against his chest, likely why he was so short with Kevin and his grandfather, but there was a relief in that pain.

He didn't know if Daniel Grayson's questions about his mother had plagued him, or if he let them go years prior, but Elijah did know that like anyone else, he deserved the truth. It wasn't an easy truth to hear, and would cause great pain. But with that pain came the relief of knowing.

So Elijah scrolled through the contacting reading 'D.G.' and pressed 'call', hanging up right away, only to call it once again.

It rang, and rang, to where Elijah almost hung up before he could hear the man's voice on his voicemail, only for the ringing to stop.

"Hello?" His voice was groggy, drained, and Elijah wondered if it was because he'd woken him up, or because he'd been in a tired daze like him.

"I got your number from your daughter's message."

"I thought that message was to some female model."

Elijah let out a tired laugh, then placed his feet atop the metal railing of his balcony. "Sorry to disappoint."

"No, I just..." There was some ruffling in the background, then the sound of a light tap. "I just expected something else. It's fine. Are you calling about the woman in the photograph? Sandra?"

He didn't know if the man had held onto that love in the back of his mind for all this time, or if she was more than just a memory that passed through his thoughts every now and again. But even before Madeline had come back into his life, if anything happened to her, not knowing would kill him. The truth would have killed him as well, but at least it would have brought a swift death.

"She died. Back in 1994. She told her brother about you after the concert, and he's the one that had the photograph. Since his sister always thought the two of you were meant to be together, he thought you should know what happened. He tried looking for you years ago, but with social media being what it is now, we gave it another try."

There was a long silence on the other end, and Elijah could have sworn he could hear the cracking of the man's heart. "So, you're her nephew?" Daniel guessed.

In Elijah's silence, he wasn't sure what the man might have heard coming from him. A tearing brain, a weight dropping on him.

"You're her son." Daniel guessed again, this time correctly, and no longer a question.

Elijah squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the tears drip against his cheeks. This was so much harder than he thought it would be, saying the words aloud. Every time Elijah opened his mouth to speak, only silence greeted him, with the occasional hitch of his breath.

"Are you still there?"

"I'm still here," Elijah confirmed before wiping off his face.

"What's your name?"

It hadn't even occurred to him he'd failed to introduce himself in any sort of capacity. "Elijah."

Several beats of silence went by, and Elijah was close to being the one to ask him if he was still there.

"Did your mom suffer?"

Elijah had done his best to put her last months in the back of his mind, trying to remember the woman she was before cancer took her over, shrinking her body into nothingness. "I shouldn't have called."

"Don't hang up. Please."

Elijah didn't hang up, but he didn't speak either. With the man's question came an image, and with that image, he couldn't trust his own voice.

"The last night your mother and I spent together, we were imagining our future and naming our children who didn't exist. She wanted 'Christine' for a girl, and I wanted 'Elijah' for a boy, so I know you're my son. We may have only spent Thursday night to Monday morning together, but I was very much in love with your mother, and continued loving her until I had to give up on ever seeing her again, and move on.

"I went to where we were supposed to meet, and I stayed there for three days. I don't regret the life I built later on, or the children I had, but if she'd shown up, I would have proposed. Her having my child wouldn't have scared me away then, and it won't scare me away now.

"You don't have to say anything you aren't ready to say, Elijah. We don't have to talk about her if it's too difficult for you. We can talk about whatever you want. Football, weather, whatever crappy movie is in the theater right now."

Elijah wiped at his face once again, willing his tears to run dry to no avail. "Apparently, I had a fever that day. That's why she wasn't there."

"I appreciate knowing the truth, Elijah. I don't enjoy hearing it, but I appreciate knowing. Your mom was the great love of my life. When you have that sort of love, no matter how brief it is, you learn to move on, but you never really move on. I suppose that's how I ended up divorced."

All Elijah could think about then was how he almost lost the love of his life. He called this their second chance, and it was, but he'd nearly lost her more than once.

Once when he ran scared.

Once when he received the call she was engaged.

Once when he received the call she was hit by a car.

He'd done his best to move on from her, but Daniel was right. When someone is the big love of your life, you don't truly move on from that. You go on living. Sometimes you find someone you can spend your life with, but you're never completely free of that person. The 'what ifs' are always in the back of your mind, threatening to come to the surface.

"I need to go," Elijah told him. Just thinking about how close he was to never having Madeline back in his life was enough to make him unglued.

"Will you call me again later? Please. I don't want this to be the only time we speak."

The desperation in the man's voice rang true to his words, and just as Jeremy said, the answer to his question became clear. "I'll call you later."