He asked this question every year on his birthday. And every year, Peter told the same story. A story he had crafted many years ago, blending truth and fiction.
“She was an artist, just like you,” he began, his voice growing softer. “Very talented. She loved to paint the sky, especially before a storm. She said it had the most drama. And she was… radiant, as if she glowed from within.”
He spoke of a fictional Catherine, whom he’d supposedly met at an art gallery, of their love, of the sudden illness that took her life right after childbirth. He lied, looking into his son’s clear eyes, and hated himself for it.
But he saw no other way. The truth was too cruel. How could he explain that his real mother had died giving him life, and that he, Peter, had stolen him from his biological family?
“She would have been proud of you, Michael,” he finished. “So very proud.”
Michael was quiet for a moment, gazing thoughtfully out the window.
“I wish I had just one picture of her,” he said softly.
Peter looked down, unable to bear his son’s trusting gaze.
After breakfast, it was time for the gift. Peter pulled a small velvet box from his pocket.
“This is for you,” he said, handing it to his son. “It belonged to your grandmother, my mother.”
Michael carefully opened the box. On the dark velvet lay an old silver locket on a thin chain. The letter “W” for Wallace was engraved on its cover.
“It’s beautiful, Dad. Thank you.”
Michael opened the locket. Inside, under a tiny glass pane, was a small, empty compartment for a photograph.
“I wanted you to put a picture of the person you fall in love with in there,” Peter said. “When the time comes.”
Michael looked up at him with his serious eyes.
“Did you ever have someone? After Mom?”
“No, son,” Peter shook his head. “After your mother, there was no one else. My heart was full with you.”
That part was the absolute truth. His entire life, all his thoughts and feelings, were devoted to this boy.
And in that moment, filled with quiet tenderness and gentle sorrow, the doorbell rang. The chime was sharp, insistent, alien in their quiet world. Peter and Michael exchanged a look. They weren’t expecting anyone.
“I’ll get it,” Peter said, rising from the table.
He walked down the long hallway, a sense of inexplicable dread growing with each step. The bell rang again, more demanding this time. There was something ominous, threatening, in its persistence. He looked through the peephole, but saw nothing. Someone was covering it with a finger.
His heart skipped a beat. Slowly, with a sinking feeling, he turned the key in the lock and pulled open the heavy oak door. The premonition of disaster that had lived with him for all these years suddenly became deafeningly loud.
The door creaked open, and he froze on the threshold, unable to utter a word.
On his doorstep stood two people: an older man, tall and straight as a ramrod despite his gray hair, with a stern, granite-carved face and piercing eyes under thick brows. He exuded an air of authority and unbending will—the kind of man neither years nor circumstances could break.
But it wasn’t him that made Peter turn to stone. Standing next to him was a young man of about eighteen, and the sight of him stole the old doctor’s breath.
It was Michael.
No, not Michael. It was his double, his perfect mirror image. The same light brown hair, curling at the temples. The same high forehead, the same shape of the lips. But where Michael was like a watercolor sketch—delicate, soulful, with a hint of fragility—this young man was an oil painting. Solidly built, broad-shouldered, with a confident, almost mocking gaze from his gray-blue eyes. He stared at Peter with a bold, almost defiant look that held unconcealed hostility.
Time stopped. Peter looked at the young man, and the world around him shattered into a million ringing fragments. For eighteen years, he had lived in fear that this day might come. He had replayed this scene in his mind a thousand times, but the reality was worse than any nightmare. The secret he had guarded so carefully, buried under layers of lies and time, had appeared on his doorstep in living, breathing form.
“Dr. Peter Wallace?” The older man’s voice was hard as steel. It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
Peter couldn’t answer. He just nodded silently, feeling the floor give way beneath him. He leaned against the doorframe to keep from falling.
“I’m George Coleman,” the man introduced himself. “Anna Coleman’s father. And this…” he placed a heavy hand on the young man’s shoulder, “is my grandson, Daniel.”
Daniel. The name Peter had seen on a birth certificate eighteen years ago. The healthy boy he had given to this family.
“What… what do you want?” he managed to say, his own voice sounding foreign to him.
“We need to talk,” George Coleman stated flatly.
His gaze was heavy, like a press. It felt as if he was trying to crush Peter, to see into his soul and turn it inside out.
Just then, Michael’s voice came from down the hall:
“Dad, who is it?”
Peter’s heart plummeted. No, not this. He couldn’t let Michael see them. Not now. Not like this.
“It’s nothing, son!” he called out, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “Wrong address!”
He tried to close the door, but George Coleman blocked it with a polished shoe.
“We’re not leaving until we talk,” he said through gritted teeth. “And I wouldn’t lie if I were you. We know he’s here.”
“He.” Peter understood that they knew everything. Or almost everything. His carefully constructed world of eighteen years was crumbling before his eyes.
Daniel, who had been silent until now, stepped forward. His face was pale with restrained anger.
“Where is he?” he asked, his voice tight with hatred. “Where’s my brother?”
“Brother.” The word was like a gunshot. Peter looked at Daniel, then at the stern face of his grandfather. He realized there was nowhere left to run. The lie that had been his sanctuary for all these years had become a cage, and the door to that cage had just been thrown open.
“Come in,” he said in a hollow, lifeless voice, stepping back into the dark entryway.
He felt like a condemned man leading his own executioners. He didn’t know how they had found him or what they knew, but one thing was certain: his quiet life had ended the moment he opened that door. Ahead lay only the unknown, full of pain, accusations, and possibly the most terrible thing of all—the loss of the only person he lived for.
When George and Daniel entered the house, Peter closed the door behind them, and the click of the lock sounded like a verdict. He led them into the living room, the largest room in the house, filled with antique birch furniture. A room where everything reminded him of the past, of his parents, of the life that existed before… before all of this.
“Dad…”
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