Chapter 32

The farmhouse had two new members. Lab puppies named Melody and Rhythm, now eight weeks old and abundantly energetic, tumbled over each other on the worn rug, their playful growls and yips punctuating the family’s evening conversation. The golden puppy, Melody, had favored Sophie, while the darker Rhythm formed an immediate bond with Emma.

“They’re getting so big already,” Sophie marveled, laughing as Melody pounced on a stuffed toy the twins had brought back from London.

“David says they’re right on track developmentally,” Jacob replied, watching the puppies with quiet satisfaction. “Another month and they’ll be ready for basic training.”

Emma, sprawled on the floor beside Rhythm, glanced up at Jacob with curious eyes. “Did you have dogs when you were little?”

The question was innocent, asked without awareness of its potential complications. In their years together, Jacob had shared very little about his childhood—occasional references to group homes or foster placements, but no detailed narratives or specific memories. The twins had absorbed the unspoken understanding that his past was largely off-limits, not through anything explicit, just through his careful redirection that followed their occasional inquiries.

Something about this evening—perhaps the comfortable domesticity, perhaps the puppies’ uninhibited joy—seemed to lower Jacob’s usual guardedness. He settled back into his chair, a slight smile softening his scarred features.

“No dogs,” he answered. “Not permanently. There was one foster home when I was about ten that had an old Labrador, but I was only there for a few months.”

The casual reference to impermanence hung in the air for a moment before Jacob continued, his tone shifting to something lighter, almost reminiscent.

“The group homes had their own kind of pets, though,” he said, his smile widening. “Monsters under the bed, mostly.”

The twins exchanged glances, surprised by this unexpected opening. Eliza, curled in the window seat with a book, looked up with equal interest.

“Monsters?” Sophie prompted.

Jacob chuckled, his eyes taking on a distant quality as the memory surfaced. “Kids and their legends. Every kid’s room had a monster. Standard issue. If you had to pee in the night, the rule was you had to jump as far as you could from the bed so they couldn’t grab your ankles.”

He showed with his hands, mimicking a leap. “The older kids would tell the younger ones exactly how far the monsters could reach. Two feet was dangerous, three feet if you wanted to be safe. Some kids measured it out with rulers, just to be sure.”

The twins giggled at the image, encouraging him to continue. Jacob, finding an unexpectedly receptive audience, leaned forward slightly.

“We had all these rules, these superstitions and stories,” he continued, his voice warming with the shared absurdity of childhood logic. “The safest place to sleep in the bad places was the closet. Monsters couldn’t get you there—though the downside was that if a big kid found you curled up with the shoes instead of in your bed you’d get teased relentlessly.”

“Why were some places bad?” Emma asked innocently.

Jacob’s expression didn’t change, though something flickered briefly in his eyes. “Some homes were good—clean, safe, with decent staff. Others were ... less good. You learned to tell the difference pretty quick.”

He shifted smoothly to another topic, his tone remaining conversational. “We all had the best hiding places for food, too. For when you got hungry between meals or overnight.”

“Why did you need to hide food?” Sophie asked, her brow furrowing slightly.

Jacob shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “Sometimes there wasn’t enough. Sometimes the bigger kids took yours. Sometimes, you got punished.” He said this matter-of-factly, without bitterness, as one might describe predictable weather patterns. “My best spot was a top shelf of a closet. Nobody ever looked that high.”

The puppies continued their play, oblivious to the weight of what was being revealed. Jacob watched them, his expression still carrying that slight smile of reminiscence.

“Mother’s Day,” he continued, a soft laugh escaping him. “When I was really little, maybe four or five, I got the idea that Mother’s Day was when mothers came back for little boys they had left behind.”

The casual delivery of this statement contrasted with its content. Jacob continued, unaware of the impact his words were having.

“I waited on the porch of the home I was in, all dressed up in whatever good clothes I had and watched the road for her.” His laugh was genuine, directed at his younger self’s naivety. “Did that for two years running, until an older kid told me I was crazy, that no mother was coming back for me or any of us. That’s just not how it worked.”

Jacob shook his head, still chuckling at the memory. “Kids believe the dumbest things, you know? The power of hope and imagination, I guess. Anyway, that cured me of Mother’s Day expectations pretty...”

He stopped abruptly, his reminiscent smile fading as he finally registered the complete silence in the room. Looking up, he found all three—Eliza and both twins—staring at him with identical expressions of horror.

Sophie had one hand pressed over her mouth. Emma’s arms were wrapped protectively around Rhythm, as if the puppy were the one who needed comforting. Eliza sat perfectly still, her book forgotten in her lap, her eyes reflecting a pain that seemed to physically manifest in the tightness of her posture.

Jacob’s awareness crashed back into the present moment, the comfortable bubble of reminiscence bursting as he realized what he had done—the invisible barrier between his past and present accidentally dissolved by what he had intended as amusing anecdotes.

“I apologize,” he said immediately, his voice shifting to a completely different register—controlled, careful, the openness vanishing like a door slammed shut. “That was inappropriate. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. I got caught up in—these are just old stories, not important. I shouldn’t have ruined the evening.”

He rose to his feet, his instinct for retreat clearly activated. Eliza moved first, crossing the room to take his hand, preventing his escape.

“Jacob,” she said, her voice steady despite her tears. “You ruined nothing.”

“Those things that happened to you,” Sophie managed, her girlish voice breaking on the words. “They’re not dumb. They’re awful.”

“No mother came,” Emma whispered, the simplicity of her phrasing capturing the heartbreak at the core of the anecdote that Jacob had delivered as a humorous reflection on childhood naivety.

Jacob looked genuinely confused by their reactions, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend why these particular stories had prompted such distress. The experiences he had described were, to him, simply the background radiation of his childhood—unremarkable in their ordinariness, worth mentioning only for their nostalgic absurdity.

“It was a long time ago,” he said carefully. “Everyone in those places had similar experiences. It really wasn’t that unusual.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Eliza replied, her hand tightening around his. “And it doesn’t make it silly.”

The twins had moved closer now, their young faces reflecting a complex mixture of emotions—sorrow for the child he had been, anger at the circumstances he had endured, and a new understanding of the man before them.

“Did you ever find out what happened to your mother?” Sophie asked gently. “Why she left you?”

Jacob’s expression remained neutral, but something in his eyes suggested this question touched a still-tender place. “No. My file just said ‘abandoned at the fire station, no identification.’ It could have been anything—she might have been very young, or unstable, or in danger herself. Or maybe she just didn’t want me.” His emotionless voice carried no judgment, only a long-settled acceptance. “It doesn’t matter now.”