Margaret wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, her hands still clutching the picture.
“I’ve got shifts to finish, Lou.”
John stood up, grabbing her gently by the elbow to lift her off the floor.
“You’re done for today, Mom. Sit down.”
Thomas stood up too, brushing the damp dirt and coffee grounds from his knees.
“Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?”
Lou nodded, gesturing toward the back door near the kitchen.
“Take my office in the back. Nobody’s gonna bother you there.”
They walked down the narrow, dimly lit hallway toward the small room lined with invoices and old supply boxes.
Margaret sat down on the squeaky vinyl chair behind the wooden desk, her hands resting flat on her knees.
Thomas took the folding chair against the wall, while John leaned his massive shoulder against the doorframe, taking up half the entryway.
For a moment, nobody spoke, each processing the sheer weight of thirty lost years.
Thomas was the first to break the silence, looking down at his uniform badge.
“All my life, I thought I was born to an empty house.”
He looked up at Margaret, his eyes earnest.
“Dad never talked about you. Whenever I asked why I didn't have a mother like the other kids at school, he’d get angry.”
Margaret swallowed hard, her frail chest heaving with a deep sigh.
“He had a dark side, Tommy. A jealous side that grew worse after John was born.”
John shifted his weight, his leather vest creaking in the small room.
“I remember the fighting, Mom. I remember hiding in the closet with my hands over my ears.”
Margaret nodded slowly, looking back at the past with distant, sorrowful eyes.
“When I got pregnant with you, Tommy, the doctor said it was a high-risk pregnancy. Arthur didn't want me going to the hospital in town. He insisted on taking me to that clinic out in Oakhaven.”
She gripped her apron tightly.
“The night you were born, they put me under heavy sedation. When I woke up, the bed next to me was empty.”
Thomas felt a cold chill run down his spine.
“He planned it.”
Margaret looked down at the floor, tears pooling in her eyes again.
“The doctor came in and told me there were complications. He said the baby’s heart stopped during labor.”
John gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white where his hands rested on his belt.
“And Dad took him right out the back door.”
Margaret looked up, her voice breaking.
“Arthur came in an hour later, looking like he’d seen a ghost. He didn't even hold me. He just said we had to pack up and leave town because the memories were too painful.”
Thomas leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring intently at his mother.
“Where did he take you first?”
“To an old cabin near the river,” Margaret whispered. “We stayed there for two months. I was so sick, Tommy. Sick with fever and grief. I could barely get out of bed.”
John spoke up, his voice low and heavy.
“That’s when he took me away, wasn't it?”
Margaret looked at John, her eyes filled with an old, agonizing guilt.
“I woke up one morning and the truck was gone. You were gone. He left a note saying he couldn't live with a woman who brought bad luck to everything she touched.”
John slammed his fist lightly against the doorframe, not out of anger at her, but out of absolute disgust for his father.
“He drove me across two state lines,” John said. “He kept telling me you didn't want us anymore. Then he dropped me at that gas station and told me to wait for him. He never came back.”
Thomas rubbed his forehead, trying to piece together the distorted timeline of his own childhood.
“When he brought me back to the farm in Blackwood, he told the neighbors I was his nephew whose parents died in a car crash. It wasn't until I was six that he told me he was my father.”
Margaret put a trembling hand to her mouth.
“Six years... you grew up six miles from where I was living, Tommy.”
Thomas looked shocked.
“Six miles?”
Margaret nodded slowly.