A chill moved through me.
My father had never been a coward. He faced exhausting workdays, unpaid bills, broken bones, and eventually cancer without complaining.
The only things he avoided were doctors, compliments, and conversations about his own pain.
I tugged at the knot in the bag.
It refused to loosen.
“Of course,” I muttered. “He tied it as if it had to survive a tornado.”
For half a second, Mr. Lewis almost smiled.
I used my car key to rip through the plastic.
The first thing I pulled out was a photograph.
A woman stood in a sunny backyard beside a gray-haired man and two young adults. Everyone was smiling. They looked comfortable together, like a family that had gathered for hundreds of photographs before that one.
I knew the woman immediately.
Not because I remembered her clearly.
I had only been three years old when she disappeared.
I knew her because I saw her eyes every morning when I looked into the mirror.
My breath caught.
“That’s my mother.”
She was older than in the few photographs Dad had kept. Her hair was shorter, and faint lines curved around her mouth.
But it was her.
There was no doubt.
A date printed in the corner showed that the photograph had been taken only six months earlier.
I turned it over.
Three names had been written on the back.
Her husband.
Her son.
Her daughter.
“She has another family,” I whispered. “She raised two other children.”
Mr. Lewis remained silent.
I looked up sharply.
“Did my dad know?”
His expression told me the answer before he spoke.
