A/N: Wow. I have never had such an incredible response from the first chapter of a story. I want to say thank you but it just doesn't seem like enough. Still, a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed, favorited, and even just read. You are all amazing. I've decided I am going to try to update this on a weekly basis so, as of right now, that means updates will be every Wednesday (or at least close to that given differing time zones and stuff). I'll do my best to stick to that promise but I don't have the whole story written or planned out yet so things might change. Anyway, thanks again for all the attention you've given this story and I hope you enjoy this chapter. :)

It was theirs.

The fabric was familiar because it came from her family. Maddie knew it immediately. She wore the same fabric—without the attached ectoplasmic aura—nearly every day. And if the feel wasn't enough, she would recognize Jack's flare for stitching anywhere. Jack, her husband, who couldn't make something without attaching their last name to it. Jack who was currently snoring like a freight train beside her and had no knowledge of the life-changing piece of evidence in her hands.

She ran a finger over the words again to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. No. The tag was real, and so was the label on it. She had already checked it over so many times—spending the afternoon pulling the piece of fabric from her pocket to study when her family wasn't looking. And every time she had been forced to make the same conclusion. The tag was definitely real, the label wasn't faked. As much as she wanted to believe it was, this wasn't some trick.

But that was impossible. It didn't make any sense. The ghost boy, Inviso-Bill—no—Danny Phantom—whatever he was called—could not in any way possess a jumpsuit made by the Fentons. Especially not one with Jack's personal label sewed inside.

Unless, someone had given him a jumpsuit without her knowing. Yes. It was possible that someone in the family had provided Phantom with clothing when...when what? That didn't make sense either.

No, even if a member of her family would—misguidedly—go behind her back to help a ghost, they wouldn't have been able to provide Phantom with a jumpsuit. Not only would normal, human clothes weigh a ghost down, but they would also interfere with the ectoplasmic continuities of a ghost's makeup. And then there was the well-known fact that ghosts have no need for clothing—the clothing they wear is as attached to them as the hair on their head. Once they die in an outfit they can never take it back.

And that was exactly what bothered her so much. Because that fact—one she herself had determined—was irrefutable. So that meant… She shuddered and the piece of fabric slipped through her fingers.

It meant Phantom had been wearing a Fenton jumpsuit when he died.

Her stomach lurched at the thought, her burger from dinner threatening to return to her esophagus. Taking a few deep breaths, she forced herself to stay calm—to think this through rationally. There had to be another explanation. She needed one. Any other one. Just one reason that might explain away why Phantom was wearing a Fenton jumpsuit when he died. Without such a reason she would be forced to confront a harsh truth—that a person, a teenager no older than her own son, had died and was somehow connected to her family. Worse, that this teenager's death was somehow connected to her family. She didn't know anyone who had died recently. But it only made sense that Phantom knew someone in her family.

She froze, her eyes finding the sleeping figure of her son. Phantom was around Danny's age. He probably knew Danny. She watched her son toss and turn in his sleep. He never rested easy anymore.

Could this, at last, be the reason for his dropping grades? For his exhaustion and strange behavior? Was he harboring a fearful secret? One involving the death of a friend and the infamous ghost boy?

There was only one problem with her theory. She swallowed hard as she stared at Danny, a disturbing thought coming to mind.

If one of his friends had died, then where was the body?

Maddie fled the confines of the RV. Flinging open the passenger door, she didn't bother shutting it as she stumbled out into the open air. Unlike herself, the night was calm and cool, a light wind coming off the water. She felt heavy and sick, like she'd been out on the rough sea for too long. Wave after wave of unwanted images flickered through her mind.

Danny watching Phantom die. Danny moving the body. Danny hiding the body. Danny sweating over his friend's dead body after digging a grave to bury him in their backyard.

She retched and her burger came back up to greet the world. Even when there was nothing left in her stomach, it heaved inside her and her body lurched. She couldn't calm herself enough to control her gag reflex. Turning away from her dinner's remains, she forced air in through her nostrils.

"Mom?"

She stilled at the sound of her son's voice. Danny stood beside the open door to the RV, his dark head cocked to the side, staring at her with one eye while he wiped the sleep from his other.

"You okay?" he asked.

Reaching up toward the sky, he stretched, a yawn escaping him. The longer his body became, the higher his pajama bottoms moved until they were at his shins. They were the pajamas she'd gotten him for Christmas two years ago—the ones with all the constellations on them. He'd gotten taller over the past year. Even when he lowered his arms again, the ends of his pants hung above his ankles. He needed new ones. How had she not noticed how much he'd grown? How had she not known he was grieving?

She forced her lips to form a smile. "Fine, sweetie," she said and wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand. "The burger just didn't agree with me, I guess."

His eyes flashed from her hunched over form to the small pile of half-digested burger and bile on the ground. Frowning, he looked back at her and, for a second, she could have sworn she saw a green light flicker behind his eyes.

"You need anything?"

She smiled for real this time. Despite having pulled away from her over the past year, her son still cared. And now that she had some idea why he had pulled away, perhaps she could start to bridge that gap.

Danny had always carried around a deep concern for the living. She could remember a time when he was six years old and he'd walked into the kitchen one summer afternoon cradling a dead robin in his arms. Tears making his blue eyes twinkle, he'd asked her how he could save the bird. She had to explain to him how once something was gone it couldn't be saved.

But he'd held the bird out to her, tears falling fast, and begged her to fix it, saying "But it's not gone! It's a ghost now right? And you work with ghosts so you can make it better again!"

She'd taken the bird away from him then and held him while he cried. She never told him, but she had tried to fix it. She spent weeks down in the lab trying to find the bird's ghost and a way to reconnect it to the little body. But her research had failed her.

"Maybe a small glass of water?" she asked him.

He nodded and disappeared back inside the RV. It was then that she recalled the piece of fabric she'd snatched off of Phantom and how she'd dropped it inside where it had fallen onto her white pillow—where Danny was sure to see it. The bit of black would stand out like a twinkling star against the night sky.

She scrambled to her feet and had taken three steps when Danny reemerged with a glass of water for her. Climbing down, he held it out to her.

"Here you go."

She took it and carefully raised it to her lips, taking a small sip. "Thanks." Maybe he hadn't seen the small strip of Phantom's suit. "It's late, Danny," she said, "Why don't you go back to bed? I'll be in soon."

"You shouldn't be out here alone," he said, his tone sharpening, suddenly becoming grave and serious.

She startled, quickly pulling the glass away from her mouth and causing a bit of water to slosh over the rim. The hardness in his voice surprised her—like that of someone who'd seen the horrors the world held, like someone who'd seen the dead. She'd never heard him speak that way before, at least not around her.

He seemed to realize his mistake and fumbled over words to correct himself. "I—I mean—" He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "That ghost," he said, sounding more unsure, "it got away, right? So it could come back?"

"Don't worry about me, sweetie." She offered him a reassuring smile and patted one of the many pockets in her jumpsuit. "If that scorpion ghost, or Phantom," she added, "do come back, I'm more than equipped to handle them."

He smiled hesitantly at her, but she noticed how he took a small step back out of her reach. "Uh, right," he said. "I'll just go back to bed then."

Climbing back inside their home for the week, he vanished from her sight. She stared down at the glass of water in her hands, thinking about both Danny and Phantom. She thought about what her son must have gone through—about what he was going through right now what with Phantom still around. Based on his grades, this had been going on for over a year, starting right around…

Danny's lab accident.

Of course. That must have been when it happened. Danny, Sam, and Tucker all claimed that Danny had only gotten a shock—that he was fine. And maybe that was true, but there must have been a fourth person down in the lab that day. Someone who was most definitely not fine. Someone who was dead.

And the three of them knew. They'd known all along. Even before Phantom showed up. How had they kept such a thing secret? Why had Danny chosen not to tell her? Did he not trust her? How had nobody noticed when a child went missing?

Her thoughts returned to the images of Danny and a dead body and she downed the rest of the water in her hand in hopes of stopping anything from coming back up. No, she didn't know what happened. She didn't have all the facts. All she had was a scrap of fabric with the words "Fenton Jumpsuit" on it.

There could be a million explanations as to why Phantom had died in one of their jumpsuits. She turned back to the RV. Okay, maybe not a million, but there had to be more than one. She was going to find that one, the one that held the truth. And, if need be, she was going to do what she should have done when all this started: she was going to help Danny through this.

Stepping back inside the RV, she placed her empty glass on the dashboard to clean in the morning. She turned to her sleeping bag beside Jack and froze. The fabric, the piece of Phantom's suit, was gone. Her eyes flew to her son. He was the only one who could have taken it, who would have a reason to take it.

Danny laid with his back to her. Though his shoulders rose and fell with a steady rhythm, she knew he wasn't asleep. His body was too quiet, like that of a scared animal. He lay completely still. If she hadn't seen him breathing she'd have thought he was dead.