Chapter 2 - The Photograph That Shouldn't Exist
He wasn't looking at me at all.
He was staring at my son like the boy was a ghost that had climbed up out of the ground.
His hands were shaking. His mouth opened and closed and nothing came out.
"Dad." I moved toward him. "What is going on?"
He lifted one arm and pointed at my boy — eight years old, both hands locked on the porch rail, staring back at this stranger who was falling apart on our front walk.
"That face," my father whispered. "That face is not possible."
Marcus put his hand on my shoulder. "Sir. You need to take a breath."
My father spun on him so fast I stepped back.
"You." His voice went low and flat and mean. "You knew. The whole time, you knew."
"Knew what?" I said. "Dad, you're terrifying the kids."
He dug into his coat with a shaking hand and pulled out a photograph. Old. Soft at the corners from years of handling.
He held it up.
I stopped breathing.
The boy in that picture — same dark eyes, same jaw, same little tilt of the head to the right — was my son. Exactly my son.
Except the photo had to be forty years old.
"Who is that?" I asked. Quietly.
My father looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked at his shoes.
And neither one of them said a single word.
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What Marcus had never told me was about to blow apart everything I thought I knew about my own family. Part 3 is below.
