Chapter 2 - The Face From Thirty Years Ago
The grandfather clock in the living room ticked with sickening volume. Outside, the blizzard howled against the corner of the eaves, hurling sheets of white Michigan sleet against the triple-pane windows.
Mara stood completely paralyzed between two worlds: her warm, chaotic family home and the quiet stranger she had coaxed into her car thirty minutes ago.
“Dad?” Mara’s voice trembled. “Do you... do you know Graham?”
Arthur didn't take his eyes off the man standing in his doorway. A muscle jumped in the old man’s temple. For forty years, Arthur Ellison had been the anchor of their household—the calm, stubborn carpenter who could rebuild an engine, fix a collapsed roof in a downpour, and settle any neighborhood dispute with three quiet sentences. Mara had never once seen him look terrified.
He looked terrified right now.
“Claire,” Owen said, his tone low, harsh, and clipped. “Take Toby and Sophie into the den. Turn on the cartoon movie. Keep the door pulled shut.”
“Owen, what is this?” Claire asked, her eyes darting between the men, clutching both kids by their shoulders.
“Now, Claire. Please.”
Claire didn't argue. Sensing the raw electrical tension snapping in the room, she guided the bewildered children down the long hall. Toby tried to look back over his shoulder, but Claire pushed the den door shut until the latch clicked firmly into place.
Once the children were gone, Elaine took two unsteady steps backward until her hips met the dining room table. She looked at Graham, her eyes glistening with sudden tears. “We looked for you. We looked for you for five years, Graham. Everywhere. Arthur drove all the way to Chicago. He went to the state offices in Lansing.”
“I wasn’t in Chicago, Elaine,” Graham replied evenly. His hands stayed out of his pockets, held at his sides, open and still. “And state offices don’t keep track of boys who don’t want to be found.”
Mara set the pie boxes down on the telephone bench beside Owen’s beer. Her hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped them. The cozy smell of cinnamon and roasting turkey suddenly felt suffocating.
“Someone needs to start talking right now,” Mara snapped, stepping directly into the center of the hall, her palms out. “Graham Foster. I picked you up at the bakery on Fulton Street. You told me you were staying downtown. You told me you had a rental car. You acted like you didn’t know me when I said my last name was Ellison!”
Graham looked at Mara. For the first time since they had stepped onto the porch, his cold expression cracked. There was guilt there—deep, aching, and raw.
“I didn’t plan to meet you, Mara,” Graham said quietly. “I swear on my life, I didn’t plan it. I was sitting in that bakery trying to gather the courage to drive up this road myself. I’ve been sitting in that rental for three hours staring at an address written on an envelope in my pocket.”
Arthur moved his hand off the post. His boots crunched against a stray piece of green bean as he stepped forward. His shoulders bowed slightly under his red flannel shirt, as if thirty extra years of weight had just crashed onto his collarbones.
May you like
“Your face,” Arthur whispered, raising one calloused finger toward Graham’s brow. “The scar. You still have it.”
“You gave it to me, Arthur,” Graham said without an ounce of malice, though the words struck the room like a hammer. “Or rather, your ladder did. July fourteenth, nineteen ninety-four.”
