Нolding rattled softly, like dry leaves in the wind.
I pushed myself up in bed, my heart slamming against my ribs.
“What did you find?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she handed me a small, worn notebook. Its cover was dark blue, the edges frayed, corners bent as if it had been opened hundreds of times and then hidden again in a hurry.
“I found it under his mattress,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t snooping. I was changing the sheets. It slipped out.”
I opened the notebook.
The first page made my breath catch.
It was Leo’s handwriting — neat, careful, almost too controlled for a twelve-year-old. At the top, written in capital letters, were the words:
“THINGS I CAN’T TELL DAD.”
I swallowed hard and began to read.
At first, it seemed innocent. Thoughts about school. About trying not to disappoint me. About wanting to be “good enough” so I wouldn’t regret adopting him.
Then the tone changed.
The entries became darker. More fragmented. Full of guilt that didn’t belong to a child.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve this life.”
“Dad would hate me if he knew the truth.”
“I have to keep pretending.”
My hands started to sweat.
I flipped a few pages forward, my pulse racing.
That’s when I saw her name.
Nora.
Written again and again.
Not as “Mom.”
Not as “My mother.”
But as “Nora.”
I looked up at Amelia.
“He never calls her that,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said. “Keep reading.”
The next entry felt like a punch to the chest.
“I remember things Dad thinks I was too young to remember.”
“I remember the man who used to come at night.”
“Nora told me to forget him. She told me he was dead.”
My vision blurred.
“What man?” I muttered.
Amelia’s voice broke.
“Oliver… there’s more.”
Further in, Leo described nightmares he’d had since he was little — dreams of arguments, shouting, doors slamming. Of his mother crying. Of a man with a deep voice and the smell of alcohol.
And then, one sentence that made my stomach turn cold:
“I saw him again last year.”
I shot up.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “We moved cities. No one knows—”
“He wrote where,” Amelia interrupted.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
I turned the page.
“He waits near the school sometimes.”
“He told me he’s my real father.”
“He said Dad isn’t really my dad. He said Dad STOLE me.”
The room felt too small to breathe in.
“No,” I said, over and over. “No, no, no…”
Amelia reached for my arm.
“He’s been seeing him, Oliver. That man has been talking to Leo behind your back.”
A thousand memories crashed into me at once.
Leo suddenly wanting to walk home alone.
Leo flinching when a stranger raised his voice.
Leo locking his door at night “just because.”
I had told myself it was adolescence. Growing pains. Mood swings.
I was wrong.
I turned to the last written page.
The ink was smeared, as if the words had been written through tears.
“He says Nora lied.”
“He says she didn’t die in an accident.”
“He says Dad doesn’t know what really happened.”
My blood ran cold.
“What does that mean?” I asked hoarsely.
Amelia hesitated, then said the words I wasn’t ready to hear:
“There was a police report attached to the back of the notebook.”
She pulled out a folded document.
It wasn’t an accident report.
It was a reopened investigation notice.
Cause of death: under review.
Suspected involvement: domestic partner.
I felt like the floor had vanished beneath me.
Nora hadn’t died by chance.
And the man who claimed to be dead — the man I had never questioned — was very much alive.
And he had found his son.
At that moment, from the hallway, we heard a soft creak.
A door opening.
Then Leo’s voice, barely above a whisper:
“Dad… I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I turned — and saw my son standing there, pale, eyes red from crying, holding the weight of a truth no child should ever carry.
And in that second, I realized something that terrified me more than anything else:
I hadn’t just adopted a child twelve years ago.
I had inherited a past someone was desperate to reclaim.
And this time… he wasn’t hiding anymore.