The acceptance letter was more than paper; it was his only escape route and it was sitting on his table in the center of hisQa quiet room. It represented a physical destination, a coordinate on a map that was not here. For the first time since waking up in this borrowed past, the future had a shape, and it was Crestview University, four hundred miles north. It was the how. The why…the deep, gnawing question of his origins…remained a formless void, a ghost that ran alongside him.
The next battle was extraction. Richard Reed stared at the letter over dinner, his expression unreadable. Chloe was openly scornful. "A full ride? To a state school? They must be desperate for warm bodies."
"It's a prestigious merit award, Richard," Cameron said, keeping his voice neutral, tapping the line on the letter that mentioned the Blackwood Group partnership. "It validates the strategic choice. No debt, and a direct access to a top-tier corporate pipeline." He was selling the deal, just as Richard had sold countless others.
Richard's eyes narrowed. He'd made discreet inquiries, as Cameron knew he would. The Blackwood pipeline was real, and very selective. A Reed, even this disappointing one, gaining entry would be a boost to his ego, a topic of discussion among his social circle and a means to climb higher socially than a mere Astor acceptance. It appealed to the cold calculator in him.
"The room and board is covered?" Richard finally grunted.
"Yes. The scholarship is comprehensive. I would only need a stipend for books and personal expenses." Cameron had already calculated the minimum number. He would ask for half of what he needed, knowing it would be cut down.
"Hmph. We'll see. Your mother and I will discuss it."
It was not a no neither a yes. It was an opening in-between. Cameron knew the discussion would center on optics and control, not his well-being. He spent the next two days in a state of suspended animation, his fate hanging on the decisions of people who saw him as a commodity.
——————
In the silent, anxious hours, he went back to his secret research. The black card from Aaron Blackwood felt less like a lifeline and more like a time bomb waiting to explode in his drawer. He didn't dare touch it again. Instead, following Graves's dry warnings about legal boundaries, he began a more systematic, patient, and frustrating search.
At the public library, using the designated federal terminal, he accessed the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). His searchings were hopelessly broad and less specific: male infant, abducted approximately eighteen years ago. The results were abandoned files of tragedy…hundreds of cases, each a universe of loss. He filtered them by state, then by a broader region. He saw dozens of names, all of them ghosts, but none sparked any recognition. How could they? He had no name, no face, only a feeling of absence and the haunting, final words of Victoria Reed from his memory: "We should return him back to the orphanage."
The orphanage. That was his only clue. It was a starting point buried in trauma. He began searching for private orphanages that had operated in the state around the time of his adoption, focusing on those that had since closed. Records were spotty, often recorded poorly or not at all. He found archives of old newspaper charity sections, listing "Haven for Little Angels" or "St. Vincent's Home." He cross-referenced these with adoption law firms the Reeds might have used, a list he pieced together from fragments of overheard conversations and documents left in Richard's study wastebasket.
It was a stressful, brain wracking and soul-crushing work. He felt like an archaeologist brushing dust from artifacts of his own lost life. One night, he found a PDF scan of a local society page from nineteen years ago. It was a charity gala for "The Willow Creek Children's Foundation," which had funded several group homes. In the photo, in the midst of a crowd of smiling faces, he saw a younger Richard and Victoria Reed standing near a woman identified as a prominent social worker. The caption mentioned the foundation's work in "facilitating private adoptions for qualified families."
His pulse quickened. This was a thread, however faint. He dug deeper into the Willow Creek Foundation. It had dissolved twelve years ago, its assets absorbed by a larger charity. The trail was cold, but it was a direction. He had no proof, only a growing, gut-deep feeling: his adoption wasn't just a happy accident for the childless Reeds. It felt… transactional. And if they had "gotten their own child" after him, as the memory revealed, then he had been a placeholder. A purchased accessory until the real heir arrived.
This suspicion, however dark and formless, was the foundation of his search. He wasn't looking for a specific powerful family; he was looking for anyone who had lost a baby boy around the right time, through channels that might connect to a place like Willow Creek. The idea that his birth family could be wealthy was not yet what he has the luxury of concluding; it was a desperate, hidden wish born from a lifetime of deprivation. In his mind, they could be anyone…middle-class, poor, alive, or dead. The not-knowing was a potent poison fueling his fears.