I Laid My Son to Rest 15 Years Ago – When I Hired a Man at My Store, I Could Have Sworn He Looked Exactly Like Him
“How long are you going to keep lying?”
But she wasn’t done.
“No, it’s not enough!” she snapped. “How dare you lie to my husband and not tell him what you did to his real son? Tell him what you told me the last time before you left. I confronted Barry about being here the other day while you were in the bathroom. He confessed. I didn’t tell you until now because I didn’t want to hurt you. But I can’t keep this to myself anymore.”
Barry stared at the table.
My voice barely worked. “Barry,” I said slowly, “what is she talking about?”
For several seconds, Barry had a strange expression on his face and didn’t answer. Then he finally looked at me. And what he said next nearly made me fall out of my chair.
“Tell him what you told me the last time before you left.”
“She’s right,” Barry said quietly.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
Barry swallowed hard. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. I mean, your son.”
Karen started crying. The sound was raw and painful, the kind that comes from years of buried anger.
My hands gripped the edge of the table.
Barry continued. “Fifteen years ago, I got mixed up with some older boys. I was 11. My mom worked all the time. I pretty much raised myself, and when you’re a kid alone that much, you find ways to stay busy.”
“What are you saying?”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“The older boys liked picking on kids and getting them to do stupid things just for laughs. I wanted them to like me.”
I could hear Karen sniffling beside me, but I couldn’t look away from Barry.
“One afternoon, they told me to meet them at the abandoned quarry outside town after classes,” he continued. “They wouldn’t say why. They just kept calling me a ‘chicken’ whenever I asked.”
“I wanted them to like me.”
“But that’s one place that all the kids have been warned to stay away from?” I interjected.
“Yeah. And I was terrified. I didn’t want to go alone.”
Barry hesitated.
“That’s when I saw him, your son. He kept to himself a lot at school. Kids gave him a hard time sometimes. I figured he wouldn’t say no if I asked him to come with me.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
“That’s when I saw him, your son.”
Karen covered her face.
“He thought I’d become his friend,” Barry whispered. “When I told him we had the same name, he smiled as if it meant something special.”
I felt my throat tighten.
Barry’s voice began to shake. “After school, we walked out to the quarry, and when we got there, the older boys were waiting. Three of them. They told us if we wanted to prove we were brave, we had to climb along the rocky edge above the water.”
“The older boys were waiting.”
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