Chapter 1

"Graduating with distinction, Samuel H. Winchester!"

I walked across the stage, shook the dean's hand, and accepted my diploma. As I reached the far side of the stage, I paused and did the one thing I'd promised myself not to—I looked across the audience, past the sea of fellow law school graduates in their black gowns and caps, their hoods lined in scarlet satin and trimmed in purple velvet. My gaze lingered over the guest seating, where family members were eagerly watching their loved ones called up to the stage.

There was no one there for me, of course. No happy mother—Mom had died before I could even remember her. No loving girlfriend—Jess had been killed too almost four years ago, and in nearly the same way. No proud father—John had disowned me once when I left for Stanford and again when I refused to join in his obsession after Jess' murder. Perhaps worst of all, no supportive sister—and I had no one but myself to blame for that loss.

I kept it together while leaving the stage and drummed up a fake smile when the other students congratulated me. I plastered on the same pleasant expression through the law school reception following the ceremony and even managed to feign enthusiasm during the party at our usual bar hangout afterward. Fortunately most of my friends and acquaintances there were too wrapped up in celebrating to notice that I was quieter than usual.

Most, but not all—Becky came over to my booth while the others were getting more drinks. "What's up, Sam? I thought you'd be more excited on your big day!"

I'd kept mostly to myself after losing Jess and as a result hadn't made any close friends in law school. But a few of my friends from our undergraduate days had stuck by me through the years, including Becky Warren and her brother Zach. I'd lost touch with Zach after his conviction for the murder of his girlfriend—something that I intended to look into once I was a fully practicing lawyer—but Becky and I continued to talk on the phone or via email at least once a month. Her flight from St. Louis hadn't arrived in time today to make the actual graduation ceremony, but I was happy to see her here now.

"I know, I should be more stoked. It's just . . . who do I really have left to share my success with?" I asked, looking down into my empty glass. "Jess has been gone for years, and I haven't met anyone since who could take her place. Brady was my closest friend, but he dropped off the face of the planet not long after her death, and I don't have many other good friends left beside you and maybe a couple more. And my family . . . well, I cut them out of my life when I came here, so it was too much to expect any of them to show up today."

"You never talked about your relatives before, so we assumed you weren't close," she responded in surprise. "In fact, most of us either thought that you were an orphan or were escaping some kind of abusive home environment."

I shook my head. "No, nothing so bad—I mean, my childhood was pretty crappy by anyone's definition, but my dad never crossed the line into outright abuse, and my sister did her best to make things easier for me. She and I were actually really close growing up, right until I left. The way our dad tried to raise us, how he expected the both of us to blindly follow along in his bullshit though—I needed to get as far away as I could, and that meant not having anything to do with anyone from my former life, including her."

"Wow, I had no idea! You didn't have to keep this to yourself for so long—you could've confided in us, in me before." She laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder.

"I know, Becks. But I had to make a clean break, and talking about my family afterward was just too painful. I guess I'm finally having second thoughts though, after being the only pathetic loser at the ceremony with no one cheering for them. So I need to figure out what I really want." I sighed.

Our other friends returned before she could say anything else, and we didn't have a chance to speak again before the party broke up. It was nearly midnight by the time I got back to my cramped studio apartment. I set my mortarboard on my desk—the gown had already been returned after the reception—and stripped down to my boxers. I then sat on the edge of the rumpled bed and stared at my diploma.

Today's ceremony was the culmination of eight years of hard work and dedication, resulting in bachelor of science degrees in Computer Science and in Management Science and Engineering, a master of science degree in Management Science and Engineering, and a juris doctor degree with a focus in Intellectual Property and Innovation. All had been earned with distinction for finishing in the top fifteen percent of my class and were accompanied by several academic excellence awards and memberships in the Order of the Coif, Phi Alpha Delta, and other honors societies. And thanks to scholarships, part-time work, and frugal living, I would be leaving Stanford with hardly any debt.

Today should've been the proudest day of my life, but somehow it felt . . . hollow. As impressive as these accomplishments were, they didn't seem to matter as much without someone to share them with. I'd done some casual dating since Jess' death but hadn't risked getting attached to anyone else. I had a few friends, but none I was truly close to after Brady's mysterious disappearance. And while John could take a long walk off a short pier as far as I was concerned, completely separating from Dee had taken almost more willpower than I'd possessed.

This wasn't the first time I'd experienced this particular discontent. Most of my freshman year had felt like a huge part of me was missing, which wasn't far from the truth—Dee had been older sister, mother, father, best friend, mentor, and more for nearly my entire life. I'd thought I'd gotten over that after meeting Jess, but in truth that empty feeling never completely went away, and in the wake of her murder all I'd wanted to do was run back to my big sister for comfort. My undergraduate graduation less than a year later and then my graduate school commencement a month ago, with their equally empty guest seats, had been just as lonely and unfulfilling as today. But shame, guilt, and a stubborn refusal to admit how badly I'd fucked up had prevented me from reaching out to her for eight long years.

I shook myself at this point, since moping and gazing at my navel like this wasn't accomplishing anything. I carefully added the newest diploma to the file where the others were stored and went to bed. Sleep eluded me for a while though, until I was forced to bore myself into slumber by recalling my dullest professor droning on about some pointless bit of minutiae.

The following morning, I went through my usual routine and then worked on cleaning up the mess that had accumulated over the past couple of weeks from studying for finals, preparing for graduation, and starting bar exam review. In the process of unburying my desk, I uncovered my stack of employment packages—at the moment I had about a half-dozen competitive job offers from promising tech-oriented firms in several major cities waiting for me. Caught in an atypical hesitancy, I still hadn't decided on which to accept . . . and considering my growing dissatisfaction, I was beginning to realize why.

I could continue like this if I truly wanted, could stick to the conviction that nothing was more important than a normal, safe life, a life that precluded any association with the person dearest to me. I could settle for one of these promising employment opportunities, move into a nice apartment in a new city, and start my ambitious way up the corporate ladder . . . alone. Maybe I'd eventually find someone to share my life with, or maybe I'd remain married to my work. Plenty of people sacrificed their personal lives to advance their careers, after all. I gazed at the potential future stretching before me . . . and found it cold and barren.

I could resign myself to a dreary, impersonal life like that, or I could take a big risk and own up to the mistakes I'd made. There really wasn't much of a choice to consider, given the bleak alternative. The desperation that had started me on this path and the pride and obstinacy that had kept me there for so long had to take a backseat to reclaim what I really needed.

It didn't take long to pack up my clothes, books, electronics, and other personal effects and load them into the trunk and back seat of my dilapidated old Civic. While this was a good bit more than the single backpack and duffel bag I'd come to Stanford with, it still didn't seem like much after being in one place for so long. I stopped at the rental office to return my keys and, after some arguing over the lack of notice, arranged to have the remainder of the month's rent and most of my deposit refunded. The manager was somewhat mollified when I told him he could either sell what was left in the apartment or offer it as furnished to the next tenant, since the furniture and housewares were secondhand at best and not worth the effort of taking with me. After a quick stop to gas up and get drinks and snacks, I got on the road.

A lot could've gone wrong in eight years, but my sister had to be out there alive and unharmed—I would've known otherwise somehow. There was the issue of finding where she actually was, however. It wasn't too likely that any of the phone numbers she'd had back then were still active, and in any case our first contact after such a long time needed to be face-to-face. She and John could be hunting literally anywhere in the country though, so I needed someone who either knew their whereabouts or had the means of tracking them down. Fortunately I knew of a couple people who fit that bill, so I pointed my car eastward and left Palo Alto behind.

After driving for nearly two days, I pulled into Singer Salvage Yard for the first time in nearly a decade. The house looked a little more rundown but otherwise appeared virtually unchanged from the last time I'd been here, as did the heaps of junk and the vehicles in various states of repair out back. The same beat-up old tow truck and rusty Chevelle were in front of the house, and I parked beside them.

Bobby came out onto the front porch as I got out of the Civic, looking a little heavier and a little grayer than I remembered but still wearing one of his many well-worn trucker's caps. His expression was uninviting, and a sawed-off shotgun was cradled in his arms. To my shock, he aimed it square at my chest while coming down the steps.

I stepped away from the car and raised my hands in an unthreatening manner. "Hey Bobby, it's . . . uh, it's been a while. I'm not sure if you still recognize me after so long, but it's Sam, Sam Winchester. I—I'm trying to find my sister."

"Oh, I know exactly who you are, jackass. You got a whole lotta nerve showing up after all these years!" he snapped, his glare intensifying. "You ain't welcome here, and I ain't got anything else to say to you. Get off my damn property, or John won't be the only Winchester I've filled full of rock salt!"

I winced—the old man wasn't pulling any punches. "I know I screwed big-time, and that's why I'm here, to try to make amends. Where is she? Is she alright?"

The shotgun didn't waver. "I don't see how it's any of your business anymore. D'ya have any idea of the hell you put us through, 'specially your br— . . . 'specially Dee?"

"Listen, I get that everyone was super-pissed when I went to Stanford, but—"

He snorted derisively. "No one 'cept for your idjit dad blamed you for going to college like any other snot-nosed kid. But the way you up and abandoned your . . . sister right when she needed you the most—that ain't forgivable in my book. You broke her damn heart, and it took her a helluva long time to recover and get her life back together. She don't need you messing her up all over again, so why don't you just turn 'round and go back to your shiny little life in sunny California!"

I raised my eyebrows at his vehemence. "Dee's a lot stronger than you're giving her credit for. I don't doubt that my cutting her out of my life so abruptly hurt her a lot, but she's resilient enough to—"

Bobby lowered the weapon and stared at me incredulously. "You think I'm talking 'bout her boohooing over a little rejection? Are you messing with me? Or . . . don't tell me you never listened to any of the messages we left you!"

I flushed in shame as I recalled how often my old cellphone had rung, mostly with one of Dee's numbers on the display, during my first few weeks at Stanford. Even after shutting off the ringer, it continued to vibrate frequently with even more unanswered calls, until I ended up stuffing it into the furthest corner of my closet. I then quickly learned to block their numbers whenever she or anyone from my past tried to call my new phone, until the calls finally stopped about a year or so after I left. Now the only unknown callers I got were the usual headhunters and telemarketers.

"I—I . . . No, I didn't. I thought I needed to sever all ties with my past in order to move forward, so I didn't answer any of those calls or listen to the messages," I admitted. "But I assumed that someone would find a way to contact me directly, like John did after Jess' death, if something serious had happened to either him or Dee."

"Is that somehow supposed to make this shit seem better, that you didn't know?" he demanded. "All it says to me is that you cared so little 'bout your family that you couldn't even be bothered to check your damn voicemail! And if I recall, Dee did try to see you more than once at Stanford, but you always found some way to dodge hi—her. No big surprise that she eventually gave up."

My shoulders hunched further as I remembered the times she tried to approach me somewhere on campus, and I'd hurriedly lose myself in the crowd or in the maze of a building. Or the times she knocked on the door to my dorm room, and I pretended to not be there and even blocked the door to prevent her from letting herself in. On each of those occasions, I'd been too concerned about keeping her out of my new life to consider if there was a more serious reason for her visits that simply wanting to see me.

"You're right, I've been a selfish asshat, and I've got a lot to make up for. Please, what happened to her?" I asked desperately.

He crossed his arms. "Uh uh, you ain't getting off the hook so easy! You wanna know what you missed out on, then find out your own damn self! I ain't telling you squat without her say-so."

"Then please help me find her, man! I need to see her more than ever, to learn how badly I fucked up and do what I can to fix it. But I can't do anything if I don't have a clue about where to look for her," I pleaded.

Bobby studied me for a long moment before responding. "Balls! Fine, but only 'cause I think she deserves the closure of ripping you a new one herself. I'm gonna make a call and see what she wants to do. You stay right here."

He brought the shotgun up to rest on his shoulder and went back in the house. While I waited, I looked around the yard for Rumsfeld, but there was no sign that a dog had been here for years. Playing with Bobby's Rottweilers during our visits here had been one of the highlights of my childhood, and not seeing one now was another reminder of how much had changed while my head had been stuck in the sand. I sighed and returned to my car to wait.

The older man reemerged after about ten minutes. I hurriedly got out again as he approached, sans shotgun this time, and shoved a piece of paper at me.

"Dee didn't want me to give you this at first, but I convinced her that she oughta see you one last time for her own sake. Better hope you got a valid passport though, or you ain't going anywhere. Now get lost and don't come back!" He then turned around, marched up the porch and into the house, and slammed the door.

I looked down at what he'd given me. It was a page torn from a small notepad and had two lines scrawled on it:

5978 Chancellor Boulevard
Vancouver BC V6T 0A1

"Huh," I said aloud, even though no one was around to hear. "Guess I'm going to Canada!"