Chapter 41

Jacob POV

Every story has a beginning and an end. But what about in between? The invisible seams that connect the dots from A to Z?

I never knew my mother’s story, only picking up little morsels here and there, trying to find the breadcrumbs back to the start like Hansel and Gretal.

As my father marches ahead of me and into his bedroom, I can’t summon any memory of her because I don’t have any.

Taking an old picture album from his bedside table, he calls me to join him at the foot of the bed.

The setting sun casts lonesome shadows across the room, giving the illusion of ghostly apparitions dancing in the twilight.

“Son, I’ve been meaning to show this to you for a long time, but the opportunity never presented itself,” he says, and he hands me a perfectly preserved, leather-bound album engraved with ‘CB & MB.’

Inside is a series of photos of my father and mother when they were much younger, him handsome and carefree, her displaying an ethereal beauty only intensified by her allur