Chapter 1 - THE NAME THAT SILENCED HIM
The man at the end finally spoke.
“What is your mother’s name?”
His voice was quiet.
Too quiet for a man with tattooed arms, a black leather vest, and a scar running from his left temple to his jaw.
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
The other bikers stopped looking amused.
The bearded man slowly placed both hands on the table.
The younger one lowered his coffee cup.
The man at the end never took his eyes off me.
“My mother’s name is Margaret Bennett.”
The color left his face.
His fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
The scar along his cheek turned white.
Behind the counter, the waitress called out an order.
A plate shattered in the kitchen.
Nobody at the booth reacted.
The biker rose so suddenly that his knee struck the table.
Coffee spilled across the black surface.
“You said Margaret Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“From Black Hollow?”
My throat tightened.
“That’s where she grew up.”
He looked toward the window as though he expected someone to be watching from the parking lot.
Then he reached beneath his leather vest.
The other bikers shifted.
For one frightened second, I thought he was reaching for a gun.
Instead, he pulled out a small silver chain.
A round medal hung from it.
The metal had been scratched almost smooth with age.
He placed it on the table between us.
On the back, two initials had been carved by hand.
L.B.
My knees nearly gave way.
I knew that medal.
I had purchased it at a hospital gift shop thirty-two years earlier.
I had been eighteen years old, frightened, unmarried, and eight months pregnant.
I had planned to place it around my baby’s neck after he was born.
I never got the chance.
The doctors told me my son had died before I could hold him.
My mother brought me home from the hospital before sunrise.
She said it would be better if I never saw the body.
She said some memories could destroy a person.
I had believed her.
For thirty-two years, I had believed her.
“Where did you get that?” I whispered.
The biker looked at me.
“My father gave it to me before he died.”
“Your father?”
“The man who raised me.”
His voice became rough.
“He told me it was the only thing I had when I was brought to his house as a baby.”
My hand moved toward the medal.
The biker covered it with his palm.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Laura Bennett.”
His eyes changed.
Not softened.
Not hardened.
Something deeper happened.
Something that looked like a locked door opening inside him.
“What was your son’s name?” he asked.
My mouth went dry.
I had not spoken the name aloud in years.
“Luke.”
The biker stepped away from the table.
The younger man beside him whispered, “Jack?”
Jack did not answer.
He turned his head, exposing the skin beneath his right ear.
A small crescent-shaped birthmark rested there.
I gripped the back of the empty chair beside me.
My son had been born with a crescent-shaped mark beneath his right ear.
A nurse had told me that before my mother ordered her from the room.
I remembered asking to see him.
I remembered my mother holding my shoulders against the hospital bed.
I remembered her saying there was nothing to see.
Jack turned back toward me.
His breathing had become uneven.
I could not feel my hands.
“That cannot be possible,” I said.
“I was told my son was dead.”
“I was told my birth mother abandoned me.”
The bearded biker stood.
His name patch read BOONE.
He looked from Jack to me.
“Maybe everyone should sit down.”
Jack ignored him.
“Why does Margaret Bennett think you have a son?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“She has been confused since the cancer reached her brain.”
I wiped my face with a shaking hand.
“For the past three days, she has kept asking me to bring my son to her.”
“And you came here looking for a stranger?”
“I thought she was remembering the baby I lost.”
Jack’s jaw tightened.
“So you decided to give her a peaceful lie.”
“Yes.”
His eyes dropped toward the medal.
“Maybe she wasn’t asking for a lie.”
I looked at the crescent mark beneath his ear again.
The diner seemed to tilt around me.
“What did your father tell you about Margaret?”
Jack picked up the medal.
“He told me to find her.”
“Why?”
“He said Margaret Bennett knew why my real mother believed I was dead.”
My chest stopped moving.
Jack leaned closer.
“And he said I should ask her who killed Dr. Samuel Pike.”
The name struck something buried deep inside my memory.
A doctor shouting in the hospital corridor.
My mother’s bloody sleeve.
A fire alarm.
Then darkness.
Jack slipped the medal around his neck.
“I’ll pretend to be your son.”
I stared at him.
He looked toward the diner door.
“But we are not going there to comfort your mother.”
May you like
His expression became cold.
“We are going there to make her tell us why she stole me.”
