Page 123 of Boomer

He scanned the shelf. Two red boxes. Of course.

He reached for the first one. A stack of old photo albums toppled out from behind it and hit the hardwood with a slap, loose prints fanning like shrapnel.

“Dammit.”

He knelt and started gathering them up. Half were curled at the edges, sun-bleached from attic heat. Holiday shots. Some school portraits.

Then his hand froze. A photo. Mid-sized. Glossy. A teenage boy stood in a backyard, tall, broad-shouldered, shirt half-untucked, a smear of grease on his jaw, like he’d been working on a car. His hair was lighter, face sharper. But the eyes. The eyes were his.

Break’s breath caught.I don’t remember this.The background didn’t make sense. Neither did the clothes. This wasn’t the right decade.

His fingers gripped the edge of the photo tighter.What the hell…?

He stood slowly and carried it into the kitchen, where his mother was wiping down the counter, humming softly like the world was fine.

“Ma.”

She turned. “Hmm?”

He held the photo out. “When was this taken?”

She glanced at it, too quickly. “Oh… I don’t know. That was ages ago. Maybe junior year? You used to help Jerry with the Mustang, remember that?”

“No.” His voice came flat. Cold. “I don’t remember this at all. That’s not Jerry’s Mustang.”

She turned back to the counter. “Well, maybe I’m mistaken.”

The lie was so casual, like every other lie she’d told after his father died. It made his blood ice over.

He stepped forward. “That’s not me… is it?”

Her shoulders stiffened. The sponge in her hand paused.

“What are you talking about?”

He dropped the photo on the table. “That’s not me.” Silence stretched. “Ma.”

Her hand trembled as she set the sponge down. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “It’s your stepfather.”

Break felt the ground tilt under him.No.

“That photo’s from when he was seventeen.”

He stared at it. At his face on another man’s body. His chest locked. “You cheated on dad…Derrick isn’t my father.” But he knew the truth. It was right there in his stepfather’s bone structure.

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

“You told me?—”

“I told you what you needed to hear,” she whispered.

He stepped back like she’d hit him. “You lied. You always lie.”

“I protected you,” she said, turning now, eyes wet. “After your father died, I needed someone, and we were high school sweethearts.”

Break couldn’t breathe.I look like him. God… I look just like him.His hand came up, like he could wipe it off his face. Scrub away the resemblance. He couldn’t look at her. Not now.

Not when everything he hated about the man who raised him might be his own blood.