It started on a Tuesday. A grey sedan, idling two blocks from my high school. Then I saw him at the grocery store, watching me from the produce aisle. Then, for the last three nights, the car was parked directly across from our house.
I was terrified. I told my mom, but she just went pale and told me I was imagining things. She closed the blinds and double-locked the doors, but she refused to call the police. “It’s just paranoia, Sarah,” she had said, though her hands were shaking.
Tonight, a storm was raging. Thunder shook the house, rattling the windowpanes. And then, it happened: a heavy, rhythmic pounding on the front door.
I grabbed my phone, my fingers trembling so hard I could barely unlock the screen. “Mom! He’s here!” I yelled, running into the hallway. “The stalker is at the door! I’m calling 911!”
“Don’t,” my mom whispered. She was standing in the hallway, staring at the heavy wooden door like it was a ghost. She looked terrified, but not of the man outside—she looked terrified of me.
“Mom, are you crazy?” I cried. “He’s going to break in!”
She didn’t listen. She walked slowly toward the entry, her hand reaching for the deadbolt.
“Mom, stop!” I lunged forward to grab her arm, but she shook me off and turned the lock. The door swung open, letting in a gust of wind and rain.
The man stood there, soaked to the bone. He was older than I thought, with grey hair matted to his forehead and a scar above his lip. He didn’t attack. He didn’t shout. He just looked at my mother with a desperate, aching sadness.
“Mom, who is he?” I screamed.
She looked at the door, then back at me with tears in her eyes. The silence stretched for an eternity, heavier than the storm outside.
“Please, Martha,” the man croaked, his voice rough from disuse. “I just wanted to see her. Just once. I kept my distance like you asked, but I couldn’t leave without seeing her.”
My stomach dropped. I looked at my mother, pleading for an answer, pleading for her to tell me this was a mistake.
“He isn’t a stranger, Sarah,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He’s your real father.”
I stumbled back against the wall. “My father is dead. You told me he died a hero in the fire before I was born. I have his picture by my bed.”
“I lied,” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “That picture was a random man from an antique store. Your father… he didn’t die. He went to prison for fifteen years to protect me. To protect us. And he’s finally come home.”
The man stepped into the light of the hallway, and for the first time, I saw it. He had my nose. He had my chin. The stranger wasn’t a stranger at all. He was the history I never knew I had, and the lie my mother had built our entire lives upon had finally shattered.
