I step onto the front porch and swing the screen door open. No lights are on in the house except a dimly lit lantern on the kitchen table. "I'm right here if you need me," my dad whispers in my ear.
"Thanks, Pop." I walk into the residence; the musty smell that has accumulated over the years of the home being uninhabited hits my nostrils and I nearly gag. "Hello?" I call out. Something shuffles in the living room. "Maggie? Maggie, can you hear me?"
Maggie suddenly bursts forth from the shadows and clings to me. "Dad!" she begins to sob.
I sympathetically hush her. "It's okay, Maggie. I'm here now. Everything's going to be fine." As I attempt to soothe my daughter, my eyes fall upon a man standing in the living room. He's a small, lean fellow, but I can't make out any of his features. My blood begins to boil and I grip Maggie tighter. "What do you want from me?" I angrily spit at him. "I can't imagine you're just going to allow me to leave here with my daughter. What do you want?"
"I don't want anything from you," says the low, gravelly voice. "I only wanted him." He raises a revolver and quickly fires three rounds into the corner. I hear my father cry out in pain.
I rush to my dad's side. "What's wrong with you?!" I cry at the man in the shadows. "You're sick! First, you kidnap my daughter and now you've shot my father!" I feel the wounds in my father's chest; three hits, two around his heart. Any chance he had of surviving just went out the window. "Maggie, go call the cops." She nods and runs out the door.
"I didn't shoot you're father," the man says.
"What are you talking about?! You're even more disturbed than I thought!"
"That man is not your father."
"Don't listen to him, Paul," my dad wheezes.
"I'm not the one lying here, and he knows it. That man is not your father."
"And I suppose you're going to tell me that you are?" I sarcastically retort.
"Of course not. I'm your brother." He slides a vanilla envelope across the floor to where I'm kneeling. "If you don't believe me, the evidence is in there. Open it." I do so, and a document, some newspaper clippings, and a photograph fall out. The document is a birth certificate issued to a Jonathan Ray O'Connor, born the Fifteenth of February, 1962 in Larum, Oklahoma. That's my birthday. But I've never been to Oklahoma. A same birth date can be easily written off as a coincidence. I peruse the newspaper clippings. O'Connor Child Abducted; City-Wide Search for Suspected Kidnappers; Police Declare O'Connor Case Cold. There's a picture of an infant with the second story. I recognize it almost immediately. That same picture is in a scrapbook at my parents' house; it's from the day my they brought me home from the hospital. I'm not sure how coincidental that is. I now look at the single photograph. It's a digitally composed picture of myself, or someone who looks a lot like me.
"Where did you get this?" I ask as I hold up the image.
"Called in a favor down at the police department. Took one of the few pictures I had of you and a computer was able to determine what you would look like now." All this information is hitting me hard, and I don't know what to believe.
"Is this true, Pop?"
My dad gives a sigh. "Your mother and I wanted a child. She just had a miscarriage. We didn't know what to do. Martha was so desperate. We heard that our neighbors had a child. We had family up here in Michigan that would help us lay low, so we..."
"You have no idea how terrible it is to sit in the hallway every night and hear your mother cry over her lost child," the man interjects. "As I held her hand on her deathbed last year, I swore to her that I would right the wrong done to my father and her forty-two years ago. I've spent the past year tracking you down and now I've completed what I set out to do."
"Don't hold this against me, Paul," the man dying on the floor says. "Didn't we raise you right? I may not have been there in the hospital when you were born, but I'm still your father, aren't I?"
My head is swimming in a sea of confusion. My entire world is collapsing around me. "I don't know who you are. I don't even know who I am. My entire life has been a lie." My eyes now transfix on the man at my feet. "And it's all because of you."
The man closes his eyes. "Still doesn't mean I don't care about you." He heaves a sigh and breathes his last.
My brother walks over to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. "You can understand why I had to do this, can't you , Jonathon? Mom loved you so much. I couldn't let this go unpunished."
I rise and look my brother in the eyes. Our resemblance is uncanny. "How did she die? Our mom, how did she die?"
"Cancer. It's a shame you never met her. Not a day went by that she didn't say a prayer for you."
"What about Dad?"
"He died when I was about twenty. That would've have put you around sixteen. Accident at the steel mill where he worked. The greatest man I've ever known. You would've loved them both. They were so scared after you were abducted that they never tried to have any more children. It's just you and me now." The sound of sirens blare in the distance. "By the sound of things, it might just be you here shortly." My brother walks to the back of the house and stares out the door.
"What are you going to do now that you've accomplished what you set out for?" I ask.
"Go on the run. I just murdered a man, so the cops are gonna be on my tail." He walks out the exit and gets into his car.
"Come stay with me for a bit. I'll help you keep under the radar."
He smiles. "I can't do that to you. Your life was stolen from you, and I don't want to cause you to throw the rest of it away. What about Maggie? That part of your life isn't a lie. You have a daughter who loves you and needs you. I've got nothing. I'm happy I was just able to finally meet you."
"What's your name at least?" I plead.
"Paul. Ironic, isn't it?" We both chuckle. He closes the door, ignites the engine, and the car disappears from view.
I walk around the house and find Maggie curled up in the front seat of the car fast asleep, exhausted from the night's events. I get in and start driving away. We pass the cops a ways down the road. In a few minutes, they're going to find a farmhouse with a dead body in it. I assume that they're going to start searching for my brother, and, if they're any good, they'll catch him. The sad part is they would be catching the wrong man. The real enemy is dead, and I wouldn't have known that truth if it weren't for Paul. All these years, the two people I thought were my closest friends were enemies in disguise. Perhaps clichés are more applicable than I thought, although not in the way that it was originally meant. Keep your friends close...
THE END
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