Alan Moore grew close to Judith Palmer on the bus ride toward the mountain pass.

He had been leaning against the window, trying to sketch the jagged silhouette of the snow-capped peaks, but the bus was rattling too much. His hand slipped; the lines were all wrong.

"Don't rush. A steady heart makes for a steady hand," a gentle voice drifted from the seat beside him.

Alan turned to see Judith smiling at him. Her hair was a striking, cropped silver, and she carried herself with a sharp, vibrant energy.

Alan felt a prickle of embarrassment. "Forgive me. It’s been years since I held a pencil."

"Think nothing of it. I’m Judith. I’m with the group, too." She gestured toward the distant summit. "That peak is capped in ice year-round, but when the clouds break, you get a glimpse of the gold. You’re lucky—the sky is clearing today."

Judith didn’t speak often, but every word she uttered made Alan feel at ease. She wasn’t like Luciana, who would lecture him with incomprehensible jargon, nor like his children, who always spoke to him with a sneer. She simply talked about the names of wildflowers or the properties of mountain herbs, her tone smooth and comforting.

For the rest of the trip, the two were inseparable. One evening, as the sun dipped low, they sat side-by-side on the weathered stone steps of the old town square.

"Alan," Judith said, looking out at the ancient architecture. "You see these buildings? Even when they’re crumbling, they have a certain grace. People are the same. The suffering you’ve endured, the grit you’ve swallowed—those are just medals carved by time. Nothing to be ashamed of."

Alan instinctively looked at his rough, calloused hands and tried to tuck them into his pockets, a wave of familiar insecurity washing over him. "My hands... they’re ugly. Back home, my kids would tell me it looked pathetic whenever I rested them on the dining table."

Judith didn’t look away. Instead, she fixed her gaze on his hands. "Pathetic? That’s not pathetic. That’s power. You used those hands to build a home, to raise children, to give them a future." She looked up, her expression hardening. "Alan, you shouldn’t be ashamed of your hard work. The ones who should be ashamed are those who sat back and enjoyed the fruit of your labor without ever saying thank you."

Alan’s chest tightened, and his eyes stung, stinging with a heat he hadn't felt in decades. His whole life, Luciana had dismissed him as mediocre, and his children had mocked him as someone only fit for a stove.

"Judith..."

"Just call me Judy," she said with a soft laugh, pulling a butterscotch candy from her bag. "Eat something sweet. We’re going to make up for all that bitterness from the past."

That night, in a small, remote guesthouse, Alan had the first good night’s sleep he’d had in years. In his dream, there was no endless housework, no cold back turned to him by his wife, no disdainful glares from his children. In his dream, he was simply walking down a road lined with flowers, his sketchbook slung over his shoulder.

Half a world away, however, Luciana Moore spent night after night sitting in the dark until dawn.

She had pulled every favor she had to track Alan down, and finally, in the video of a travel influencer, she saw a flicker of him. In the footage, Alan was wearing a photographer’s vest, standing under the snow-capped mountains, laughing with a brightness that made her heart stop.

"Alan..."

The day Killian Daniels was dragged away for questioning, it was a messy, humiliating spectacle. Luciana didn't even turn to look. She locked herself in her study and stayed there for the entire night.

Brody and Charlotte sat in the living room, their faces etched with misery. The house hadn't been properly cleaned in two weeks; a layer of grey dust coated everything. Felix, still recovering from a stomach flu, was curled up on the sofa, mindlessly tapping at his tablet. "I want Grandpa..." he whined.

The study door opened, and Luciana stepped out, her face gaunt and grey.

"Mom, please, you have to eat something," Charlotte pleaded.

Luciana ignored her, holding up her phone screen with a trembling, raspy voice: "Look at this. See for yourselves."

Brody and Charlotte leaned in. On the screen was a paused video frame. Alan stood under the mountains, his color vibrant, the corners of his eyes crinkled with a genuine, relaxed smile.

"Is... is that Dad?" Brody gasped, his mouth agape.

In his memory, his father was always hovering in the background in a stained apron, forever soft-spoken and invisible. But the man in the photo, despite the lines of age, exuded a scholarly, dignified calm.

"And he’s with that old woman?" Brody stood up, his voice thick with a strange, indignant shame. He pointed at Judith on the screen. "He’s an old man! What kind of look does this give us?"

"A look? You’re worried about your image?" Luciana looked up sharply, her eyes pinning her son to the floor. "We were the ones who drove him into the ground. We were the ones who kicked him out. He’s been out there on his own—we haven't cared if he was dead or alive—and you’re worried about your reputation?"

Brody shrank back, silenced.

Charlotte looked at the stranger in the photograph, and suddenly, she started to sob. "Mom, I miss Dad. Felix has been crying for his soup for days, the house is falling apart, and that uncle of ours was just a fraud the whole time... How could we be such horrible people?"

Luciana closed her eyes, exhausted. She had spent her life calculating complex data, yet she had failed to calculate the simplest thing of all: the human heart.

"He’s out there alone. If he gets sick, there’s no one to even bring him a glass of water," Luciana whispered, her jaw set with a sudden, desperate resolve. "We’re going to get him."

"This family can't function without him."

"Yes, we'll go get him!" Charlotte wiped her tears, frantically pulling out her phone. "I’ll check the tour group's itinerary. Let’s book the flights now!"

"Dad always loved me best. As long as I apologize, he’ll come back," Brody added, rushing to pack a bag. "Once he’s back, I’ll make sure to treat him properly."

Luciana looked around at the shambles of her home, already picturing Alan back in the study, grinding ink for her, brewing her tea in the kitchen. She even told herself that as long as he returned, she could overlook those photos with the other woman. She would buy him the finest art supplies, bring him to the most prestigious galas—it didn’t matter if he didn't fit in.

Late that night, the three of them dragged their suitcases to the airport, looking every bit as broken as the life they had built.