I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!

I'm sooooooo sorry this chapter is a day late. Two weeks. I had two weeks to get this chapter to you. I thought "I can totally do it in two weeks." Then yesterday came around and I realized "I can't totally do it in two weeks." Sorry.

But thank you for all your incredible reviews! I read every single one (usually more than once) because I want to make sure I'm taking into account everything you are telling me. Also, thanks to everyone who is following and favoriting. I've never had so many people reading my story before. It's an honor.

Anyway, here's the next chapter. Hope it's worth the wait!


While the rest of her family busied themselves outside in preparation of a freshly caught (and cooked) dinner, Maddie snuck away to the RV again. Using the internet they'd hooked up in the vehicle, she searched for the information that might tell her who else had been there during the lab accident. After only half an hour, she had three names written down.

Three names.

That was all that stood between her and the truth. After all that had happened, all she had learned, that was it—three names.

Joseph Miller

Kyle Gronkowski

Devon Tames

Those three names were the only remaining supports holding up the barrier in her mind. The one keeping her crazy theory from taking over. She needed those names. But it was more than that. She needed one of the people behind the name to fit the incongruous circumstances surrounding the accident that had taken place in the lab.

And she knew what that meant she was really hoping for: she was hoping to discover one of the boys behind the name was dead. She wanted a child to be dead. It was a terrible thought. But one she couldn't stop.

It was also one she refused to stop. Because if she did then she'd have to consider a worse alternative. And she couldn't go there. Not with Danny. Not with her son.

So she hung onto those three names like life vests in a storm. They were the things keeping her afloat while she sat with Danny, Jazz, and Jack for dinner, when she commented on how well Jack and Danny had cooked the fish, how proud she was of Danny for catching something so big.

Joseph Miller

Kyle Gronkowski

Devon Tames

She still had yet to talk to Jack, but with the three names in her head, she found her need to talk with him temporarily satiated.

That night the need returned as she scoured the internet for information on the three boys. Someone, somewhere, had to know what had happened to them, where they'd gone, and why they'd been a part of Danny's class one year but not the next. All she needed was to find something on one of them, something that pointed to the tragedy that had become Danny Phantom.

All she needed was one little comment to confirm that one of these names was now a ghost.

Joseph Miller

Kyle Gronkowski

Devon Tames

No, that wasn't true. She had to be thorough. She couldn't hold any old rumor on a pedestal and treat it like a fact. She needed real evidence showing one of these boys had died close to a year ago. The death of a fourteen-year-old. The tragic event was sure to at least make the local paper. But, so far, she'd found nothing.

"Mom?" Danny whispered from the other side of the RV and she jumped, his voice startling her. "What are you doing up?"

She glanced up from the screen, the darkness surrounding her engulfing her vision and making it impossible for her to see further than the hands folded in her lap. She blinked a couple times, trying to adjust. Suddenly she understood why so many people claimed using bright screens in the dark would make a person blind.

As her eyes gradually adjusted, she began to make out the form of her son sitting up from his cot. She was blind in more ways than one, she thought ruefully. She had to find a way to see again. Glancing back at the computer screen, she knew it wasn't going to give her the sight she wanted. Only Danny could do that.

She didn't think Danny would tell her anything. He'd had a year to do so and, for some reason, had chosen not to. So why would he tell the truth now?

She'd been running on the assumption that even if she asked him, he would lie to her. Perhaps that was true, but he was her son and she was his mother. And, as his mother, shouldn't she trust him enough to at least give him the opportunity to tell the truth? Maybe all he needed was the chance.

Maddie thought back to the conversation she'd overheard.

When Jazz mentioned how she told her she'd love her no matter what, Danny had jumped in saying how that only applied to Jazz, implying that—for some reason unbeknownst to Maddie—she wouldn't or couldn't love Danny the same.

Feeling awful, she squirmed in her seat. What a terrible mother she must be for her child to question her love for him. She had to reaffirm that her love for him was unconditional, just as it was for Jazz.

"Mom?" Danny asked again and she realized she hadn't answered him the first time.

Looking up at him, she said, "Yeah, sweetie?"

He leaned forward a bit, his eyes squinting in the dark. "You okay? You're not sick again, are you? I swear I made sure the fish was cooked all the way through."

She smiled softly. "Oh no," she said, "I'm okay."

Danny shuffled out from under his covers, his gaze swinging over the sleeping figures of his father and sister. She watched as, with an impressive amount of agility and stealth, he maneuvered around Jack and Jazz, not even making a sound. Seeing the way he moved, it was suddenly easy to understand how he always managed to sneak away from them.

"What are you doing?" he asked, eyeing the computer screen.

Belatedly, she thought she should have shut it down before he could see what she was doing.

"Why are you looking up," he leaned closer, "Joseph Miller, Kyle Gronkowski, and Devon Tames?"

Tell him the truth, she told herself. Maybe, if she did, and she made sure he knew how much she loved him, he would come clean too. She wanted to trust him just as she wanted him to trust her.

"Each of these boys disappeared between your eighth and ninth grade school year," she explained. "I was looking to see if any of them might have a ghostly connection." She purposely left out that she was specifically seeing if any of them had a connection to Phantom, hoping that by not mentioning that little tidbit of information, Danny might be a bit more forthcoming with her.

"Oh," Danny commented, leaning away again. "Why didn't you just ask me?"

She smiled. "You were sleeping and I didn't want to bother you, sweetie."

He shrugged. "Well, I'm not sleeping now." He eyed the names on her list once more. "Joseph Miller's parents decided they didn't want him going to Casper for high school so they sent him to a private school. Not ghostly connection there."

She nodded and crossed the name off her list.

"Kyle Gronkowski's family moved to Colorado last September. That's why he's not in my freshmen class."

She crossed the second name off the list. Her pen hovered over the last name. Devon Tames. He had to be the one. She desperately needed him to be the one.

"And Devon Tames?" Danny echoed her thoughts. "He still goes to Casper. He's not a freshman though because he skipped a grade. He's a sophomore now. The kid's a genius, a lot like Jazz."

Her heart and her hope sunk at Danny's words. "So none of them are dead?"

Her son frowned at her, shaking his head. "No. They're all very much alive. Well, as far as I know. I suppose something might have happened to Kyle since moving to Colorado, but…"

She forced a small smile onto her face, though it probably came out looking more like a grimace. "No, no," she said. "I'm sure you're right, Danny."

With great difficulty, she crossed the final name off her list. There was still one more name she hadn't written down, mostly because she didn't want to consider him a suspect. But now, he was the only one left. Still, she clung to the idea that there might be one other she could have overlooked.

"Mom?" Danny started, but stopped, seemingly hesitant to ask her something. Reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck, he said, "Why are you looking for a dead teenager?"

She sighed, biting down on her bottom lip. Trust, she reminded herself. She was done with the lies and sneaking around. If she wanted Danny to be done with them too then she had to trust him. She could only hope he would trust her in return.

"I'm trying to find out who Phantom was before he died."

Danny stumbled backward at her words, nearly tripping over his father's sleeping form. "I—you—but—" Words formed at his lips but he couldn't seem to find the right ones to say.

"I know you know," she said, "and I also know you don't want me to know but, Danny, you can trust me. I'm your mother and I love you, no matter what your connection is to Phantom."

Her son had turned white, his skin practically glowing in the dark. She watched as he visibly swallowed and backed away from her.

"I—uh—I need to take a walk," he finally finished. His hand fumbled around the door before finding the handle and escaping out into the open air.

Maddie turned back to her list. Scrunching the paper up in a little ball, she threw it towards the trash bin, missing by a couple inches. Apparently her aim was only accurate with a gun. When it came to anything else, she sucked.


Maddie never realized just how busy a vacation could be.

People always assumed the words "vacation" and "relaxation" went hand-in-hand, but that wasn't true. There were still things to do, places to go, people to see. They'd spent the first couple days of their vacation camping on the beach but now it was time to move on.

Jack wanted to visit and tour an old hotel in the area that was rumored to be haunted. She said Jack but, in truth, she wanted to see the hotel just as much as her husband. Who knew what kind of ghosts they might run into there? The town was known for a serial killer that claimed ten victims before being apprehended in that very hotel. The possibilities excited her.

Jazz wanted to listen in on a lecture at a local university detailing a possible connection between psychological trauma and a belief in extraterrestrial life. She insisted such a topic might be relevant to her own research involving a ghost's psyche. And when Jack had begged her to choose something else to do, she refused to change her mind. It was during such arguments that Maddie was reminded just how alike her daughter and husband were—both could be so bullheaded sometimes.

And Danny…well, Danny didn't want to do much of anything. And anything he did do, he made sure she wasn't involved. He was ignoring her as much as he could. Ever since she'd come clean about her suspicions, he'd begun avoiding her in any and every way possible. And she let him. She still wanted him to trust her, to come to her with the truth. If he needed space to figure out how to do that, she'd gladly give it to him. Well, maybe not gladly. More like a bit begrudgingly. But still, she waited.

To ease the wait, she resolved to talk to Jack. She still didn't know what had happened to Danny's hazmat suit. She suspected, but again, she needed proof to confirm her suspicions. So, after Danny and Jazz had gone to bed—the two having taken to sleeping on the roof of the RV since that night she'd talked to Danny (Jazz claimed it was because she and Danny wanted to watch the stars and, part of that might have been true, but she also suspected it had to do with Danny distancing himself from her)—she broached the topic to her husband.

"Jack?" she asked.

"Hmm?" he hummed, reaching a hand up to cover his mouth as he yawned. It was obviously getting close to his bedtime too.

"Danny's pretty close to Tucker and Sam, right?"

"Sure, Mads," he said. "They're his best friends, aren't they?"

"Of course." She nodded. "But what about the other kids at Danny's school? Do you ever remember him hanging out with any of them? Maybe around the time of his lab accident?"

Jack yawned again and stretched, his hands scrapping the ceiling of the RV.

"No," he said, rubbing at his eyes. "But he should. They're nice kids." A thought seemed to awaken him and he straightened. "Oh, remember how a bunch of them joined the ghost-keteers? We had so much fun at those meetings." Jack frowned. "Hmm, we haven't had a meeting in a long time, maybe I should schedule one."

She nodded absentmindedly. "That would be nice," she said. "But Jack? You didn't perhaps loan one of the ghost-keteers Danny's hazmat suit, did you?"

"Danny's hazmat suit?" Jack repeated, continuing to frown. "You mean the one I made him?"

"Yeah. The white and black one?"

"Oh yeah, that one!" her husband boomed the memory returning to him. "Hmm, I haven't seen that in a long time."

"So you think you might have loaned it to a ghost-keteer then?" she pushed, desperately hoping the next word out of Jack's mouth would be "yes."

It wasn't.

"No," he said, scratching the top of his head. "Danny's suit went missing long before we had our first ghost-keteer meeting."

"Oh." Her hope all but disappeared at his words.

"I wish I knew what happened to it," Jack mused. "I remember doing this really cool looking design on the 'Fentonworks' tag but I can't remember what it was to recreate it."

She gulped. "Did it have something to do with a swirl on the 'F?'"

Jack lit up. "You remember it! Do you think you could draw it for me, Mads? I really want to make another one."

She swallowed, unable to issue a single word in response. Her husband bounced excitedly beside her, but she only felt like she was melting into a puddle of despair. She'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. But the evidence was staring her in the face, possibly beating her over the head. There wasn't another. She was never going to find someone else as connected to Phantom as Danny was.

If Danny's hazmat suit and Phantom's jumpsuit were one and the same then that meant…