the boy asked, frightened, seeing the tears on Mike’s face. “Are you okay?”
Mike quickly wiped his eyes and put the photos back in the box.
“It’s nothing serious,” he said, trying to sound calm. “Just remembering things.”
Leo set the wood down in the corner and looked at the ranger with concern.
“You can tell me what’s bothering you. Maybe it’ll help to talk about it.”
“Someday I will. Not now,” Mike replied. “Some memories are too painful.”
For the rest of the day, he acted strangely, lost in thought. He would start to say something to Leo, then stop mid-sentence. He would stare at the boy for long periods, studying his face. Leo sensed the tension but didn’t understand the reason. He tried to act normal, helping with chores, but he could tell something had changed.
That evening, they sat in the living room. Leo was reading a book Mike had given him, while the ranger pretended to fix an old clock. In reality, he was secretly watching the boy. In profile, Leo was the spitting image of his sister. The same shape of his eyes, the same way he furrowed his brow when he didn’t understand something in the text. He even smiled just like Ellie did as a child.
Mike wrestled with the question: should he tell Leo the truth, or wait? On one hand, the boy had a right to know he had an uncle. On the other, what if he was wrong? Shouldn’t he find more solid proof first?
“Uncle Mike,” Leo said suddenly, looking up from his book. “You’ve been looking at me funny all day. Am I doing something wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine,” Mike answered quickly. “Just thinking. About life. About how everything is connected.”
Leo shrugged, confused, and went back to his reading.
That night, Mike couldn’t sleep. He made a decision: tomorrow, he would drive into town and try to get some official records. He needed more concrete proof before talking to Leo. Maybe he could find Ellie’s marriage license, or Leo’s birth certificate. Until then, he wouldn’t say a word to the boy. He couldn’t risk hurting a child who had already been through enough.
If this really was Ellie’s son, it meant he’d had a nephew all these years and never knew. And Ellie had died, and he hadn’t even been to her funeral. The thought was so painful he squeezed his eyes shut. Tomorrow, he would drive to town and find out everything. For now, he had to act normal, so he wouldn’t scare Leo.
Mike finally fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, and in his dreams, he saw a little girl who looked like Ellie, crying and calling his name.
The next morning, Mike was unusually focused and quiet. He drank his coffee staring out the window, clearly deep in thought.
“I have to go into town for a bit,” he finally told Leo. “Need to take care of some paperwork, pick up a few things.”
“Can I come with you?” the boy asked hopefully. “I’d like to walk around town for a little while.”
“No,” Mike said firmly. “You stay here, keep an eye on the place.”
He wrote a list of chores on a piece of paper and handed it to Leo.
“Feed the birds at the feeders near the house, bring in some water from the well, and keep the stove going. I’ll be back this evening.”
Mike started up his old Ford pickup and drove off, leaving a cloud of exhaust behind him. Leo waved from the porch for a long time, feeling strangely alone. For some reason, Uncle Mike seemed anxious and distant today. It was going to be a long, boring day.
Leo finished all his chores in two hours. He fed the chickadees and finches, brought in four buckets of water, chopped some kindling, and stacked it by the stove. Now there was nothing to do, and evening was still a long way off. He wandered around the house bored, looking at the old books on the shelves, studying the photos on the walls. They were all pictures of nature: the forest in different seasons, animals, birds. But there were almost no family photos. Leo noticed a few empty frames on a shelf—someone had clearly removed the pictures. He wondered who had been in them. Probably Uncle Mike’s late wife. It must have been too painful to look at them.
Wanting to do something nice for his uncle, Leo decided to tidy up the house a bit. He dusted the furniture, swept the floor, and arranged the books more neatly. In Mike’s bedroom, while dusting an old dresser, Leo accidentally bumped one of the drawers. It slid open unexpectedly—the lock must have been broken for years, and the drawer just stuck. Inside was a stack of documents and old photographs. Leo was about to push the drawer shut; it wasn’t right to snoop through someone else’s things. But the first thing he saw made him freeze.
A birth certificate. Eleanor Thompson. The exact same name as his mother. Could it just be a coincidence? With trembling hands, Leo picked up a photograph lying next to it. It showed a girl of about ten with pigtails and cheerful eyes. The boy gasped: she was the spitting image of his mother as a child. He had seen similar pictures in his family’s photo album at home.
Leo sank to the floor in the middle of the room, unable to believe his eyes. His hands shook as he looked through the photos one by one. His mom at different ages: five, ten, fifteen. The same smile, the same eyes, the same mole on her cheek. There was no doubt: this was his mother.
In one of the photos, his mom was standing next to a slightly older boy. The boy looked like Mike, only younger: the same facial features, the same serious smile. Leo turned the photo over. On the back, in a child’s handwriting, it said: “Ellie and Mike, 1995.”
Everything fell into place. Mike was his mother’s brother. Uncle Mike was his real, biological uncle. Leo cried with a mixture of joy and shock. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he was smiling from ear to ear.
“I have a family. A real family!” he repeated to himself.
He remembered his mom’s stories about her strict older brother who always protected her. Mom had said they had a fight when she got married and hadn’t seen each other since. But she never told him his name or where he lived. Now it all made sense why Mike sometimes looked at him strangely, why he asked odd questions about his mom. He had recognized his nephew.
“But why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he tell me the truth right away?” the boy wondered.
Leo decided to wait for his uncle to return and find out everything. They needed to talk openly, with no more secrets. For the rest of the day, Leo paced the house in a state of incredible excitement. He would sit down, then jump up, then walk from room to room. He couldn’t focus on anything. He looked at the photos again and again. In one, his mom was holding a bouquet of flowers and laughing, her arm around a serious teenage Mike. In another, they were building a snowman in the yard—his mom was about seven, and his uncle was eleven. Another picture: his mom blowing out candles on a cake, with Mike standing beside her holding a gift.
They were a real family, Leo thought, feeling both joy and sorrow. And then something happened. He remembered how his mom would sometimes get sad for no reason, how she would stare out the window on long evenings. Now he understood: she missed her brother. But why did they fight? And why did they never make up?
The boy rehearsed what he would say to Mike.
“Uncle Mike, I know you’re my uncle.”
Or maybe he should ask cautiously: “Uncle Mike, are you sure you didn’t know my mom?”
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