Lately, Lucas couldn’t shake the strange visions—salt in the air, the shriek of seagulls, the rhythmic slap of small feet on a metal gangway. They came without warning, flickers of memory so vivid they felt borrowed. Like echoes from a life he couldn’t remember living.
He had never given much thought to his early childhood. The years before age six had always been a quiet blur, and for the most part, that hadn’t bothered him. But today—on Thanksgiving, surrounded by warmth and laughter—he felt like a story missing its first chapter. And for the first time, the silence of those missing years unnerved him.
Still, Lucas smiled, made small talk, and tried to lose himself in the swirl of family voices and the comforting scent of cinnamon and roast turkey. What he didn’t know—what no one could have known—was that this Thanksgiving would unlock everything. That by the end of it, his life would be nothing like he remembered it to be…….
Lucas Harrigan was four years old and full of life. He had the kind of smile that made strangers grin back, the kind of laugh that echoed in the room and made others swoon. To his parents, James and Kiara, he was their entire world— but only when they weren’t fighting.
The Harrigans weren’t bad people. They loved their son dearly. But they had fallen out of love with each other somewhere along the way, and their resentment lingered like steam in a sealed room. Arguments were daily. Loud voices, slammed doors, sharp words. Lucas had grown used to it.
He had learned how to disappear—not literally, but emotionally. While his parents bickered, Lucas often wandered away just far enough to not hear the yelling. He’d hum to himself, push his toy truck across railings, and find peace in tiny adventures of his own making.
Vacation was supposed to change that. The Royal Caribbean cruise had been James’s idea, an olive branch of sorts. He thought a change in scenery might heal what was broken. He pictured quiet dinners and sunset photos. But no amount of ocean breeze could calm the storms they carried within them.