PART 2
Vernon’s hands were shaking as he held out the locket.
“Open it,” he said.
I did.
Inside was a photograph I had never seen. A young man, strong and laughing, with a toddler on his shoulders.
The toddler was me.
The man was him.
Younger. Clear-eyed. Whole. But unmistakably the man standing in front of me.
“I don’t understand,” I said, though some part of me, some deep and hidden part, was already beginning to.
“Hannah,” he said, and his voice broke on my name. “I’m your father.”
The plate of food slipped in my hands. I barely caught it.
“That’s not possible,” I said. “My father left. Mom said he left when I was little. She said he was gone.”
“He was gone,” Vernon said quietly. “Just not the way she let you believe.”
I looked down at the photograph again. At the laughing young man. At the little girl on his shoulders with her fists in his hair.
