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The other photos that had sat in that nook—a few of my baby pictures, one of Henry, and a couple other family photos—were all gone, presumably packed up.
But this one…
I bent down and retrieved it. I was always amazed at how much I resembled my father. In this wedding pic, he was young, blond, blue-eyed, and handsome. He looked genuinely happy. Genuinely normal.
My mother was radiant in her wedding gown, her hair glowing around her shoulders. She was beautiful. She still was, with silver hair and light-brown eyes.
But she’d aged so much in the past year.
We all had.
I looked again at my father’s image.
Was he already messed up then? What had caused him to become what he was?
Thanks to the Steels’ investigation and the information that had come out when arrests were made, I knew he’d been corrupted by power and money, beginning when he was in high school. Had he already done heinous things by the time he’d wed my mother? Joe would know. The Steels hadn’t told me everything they’d found, at my own request. I’d needed to keep my sanity.
But sanity be damned.
If I was to truly make sure I didn’t become my father, I needed to know everything there was to know about him—what he’d done and why.
What could make a good man turn bad? Could anything? Or was he never a good man to begin with?
With the photo in hand, I headed into the nursery. My mother was standing at the crib, gazing down at a sleeping Henry.
“Mom?”
She turned. “He looks so much like you when you were a baby.”
“I don’t know about that.” I smiled. “He’s so beautiful.”
“So were you. Just gorgeous. Just like…” She looked upward wistfully.
…your father.
The two words she didn’t say.
I’d been told all my life how much I resembled my father. Even his mother—my grandmother, may she rest in peace—had said the same thing, said how much I looked like my father at every age. She’d been gone over a decade now. Thank God she never knew who her son really was.
I cleared my throat and held up the wedding photo. “I found this on the floor in the foyer.”
“Oh.” She quickly grabbed it from me. “The movers must have dropped it.”
“Mom…”
“They must have— Oh, it’s no use. You already know I destroyed it.”
“I had a feeling.”
“Do you know how difficult it is to look at this photo of what has always been the second happiest day of my life?”
“The second happiest day?” I said.
“The first happiest day was the day you were born, Bryce.”
I warmed with love for my mother. “I understand. Even though I wasn’t expecting him, the day I got Henry has turned into the happiest day for me.”
“Children do that. You were so precious to me. We tried, but we never got blessed with another.” Then she shook her head. “I used to love to gaze at this photo. To remember how happy your father and I were then, and we were happy. At least I was. I always thought your father was. But now I look at it and I feel sick. It was all a lie.”
