Early morning sunlight filled the living room. My face was buried into the couch where I must have fallen asleep. Thankfully, I had no dreams. If I dreamed or didn't dream had become the gauge by how I evaluated a good night's sleep. With no dream to haunt me, I dragged myself from the couch to follow the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen.

Pa was standing at the stove, moving eggs around in a skillet. Bacon, toast, and a bowl of fruit were already on the table. Since we all rose early each day, the kitchen was usually a busy place. Not this morning.

"Good morning," I said while pouring a cup of coffee.

Pa glanced over his shoulder. "Good morning, Liam. Did you sleep well?"

I took the juice from the fridge and set it on the table. "Not bad, considering I slept on the couch. What time did you come home?"

He didn't answer right away. Pa carried the skillet of eggs to the table and used the spatula to serve some for the two of us. I waited for him to join me.

"Late. I stopped off to see a friend and then went to Charlie's for a drink." Pa sat down and began buttering his toast. He rarely drank, and it was unusual for him to go to the bar without friends or something to celebrate.

"I've already called about Seth. They said he's doing better than they expected. Doctor already made his rounds and said he could go home anytime. I'll pick him up after breakfast," Pa said.

"I can get him."

"No. It seems like this gang has it out for you and your brothers. I'd like for the three of you to lay low for a while. Let the sheriff find these guys or confirm they've moved on. They're not locals, so it's possible they've left town already. The sheriff can't figure out where they're staying, but he's had multiple sightings. Every time the authorities show up, they disappear. They can't stay under the radar forever," Pa said.

I didn't like the sound of that. These guys caused all sorts of trouble, but we're the ones under house arrest. "But Pa, tomorrow's the Fourth of July celebration. Seth, Cole, and I were planning to go. I'm taking Harmony too," I said. I wasn't one hundred percent certain Harmony still wanted to go with me anymore.

"I don't think it's a good idea," Pa said as he stared at his food.

Cole came into the kitchen with tons of energy, as usual. I always thought I was a morning person, but Cole could make me question that assumption. He was usually bouncing off the walls even before he had coffee. "Morning, family!" Cole exclaimed, ruffling my hair and slapping Pa on the back.

"Morning," I grumbled.

"Good morning, Cole. I guess we don't need to ask how you slept," Pa said, chuckling.

Cole sat down with a plate full of food that made ours look like we're on a diet. That kid could put away the food. Ma used to say that I did the same thing at his age, but I don't remember.

"Pa wants us to lay low until they catch that gang or they move on." I watched for Cole's reaction.

"What? Tomorrow's Independence Day. I've been waiting months for this." Cole's entire demeanor seemed to deflate.

"Maybe if you promise to stay together—" Pa began.

"We do!" Cole jumped out of his seat and did his version of a victory dance. I felt like joining him, but I had no plans to hang out with my brothers the entire day and night. I wanted some time alone with Harmony if she'd have me.

"All right. But then I want your butts glued to our land until this blows over. I guess there'll be enough people around to keep you three out of trouble," Pa said, then took a sip of his coffee.

"Deal," Cole said, before sitting down and inhaling his food faster than it took me to finish my eggs. Watching Cole eat was like watching a sporting event. It was hard to look away.

Cole was done and out the door before my first cup of coffee was finished. Once again, it was just Pa and me. He wasn't reading his paper as he usually did after he finished eating breakfast. He kept staring at the steam coming from his second cup of coffee.

That got me thinking. "Pa. Who did you go see last night, and what did you and the sheriff talk about?"

He looked up from his preoccupation with his cup to stare at me a moment. "I went to see the lawyer who arranged your adoptions for us."

This was not what I expected to hear. "Why?"

Pa toyed with his cup. "Something you and Seth said about these guys. It's most likely nothing, but I didn't want to be caught off guard if there was something in your past that might come back to hurt you."

"I thought we were abandoned and nobody knew who our real parents were," I said, a knot forming in my throat. Something had Pa shook up and he was a hard man to rattle.

"That's true, mostly. Nobody knew the name of your parents or where you came from. You didn't turn up in any missing person database, which was strange, considering there were three of you." Pa seemed to be lost in a memory and I tried hard to wait patiently for his reply, but a sense of urgency was making me anxious.

"What do you mean by 'mostly'? What aren't you telling me, Pa?"

"Your ma—Molly—didn't want you to know about your real ma until you were older. She felt it might harm you all to know such a tragic thing too early." He looked sad and it tugged at my heart, but I needed to know anything he knew about our past.

"Pa."

He took a deep breath and let it out. His wrinkles seemed deeper and his hair was almost white now. A year ago, it was salt and peppered, but now it was as white as it could be.

"We told you that you three were left at an orphanage, but that's not true. It was a little white lie created to erase the ugly truth." Pa took another sip of coffee and pushed his plate away.

"It was big news in Tennessee. Three children found in a remote area of woods. It wasn't even that they found you boys alone. Children are abandoned every day, unfortunately." Pa was looking more and more uncomfortable telling his story and I was more and more entranced by his every word.

"What made it so sensational was that you were found in the woods, next to a woman who died violently. Her body had been bitten and torn. They said she must have been attacked by a wild animal, but the autopsy was inconclusive." He watched my face as his words sunk in.

We had a mother. And she died, most likely in our presence. That same sickness I'd been battling came back with a vengeance. I jumped up, knocking the chair over before running to the sink to throw up. When I was done, I felt Pa's hand on my shoulder. He handed me a clean cloth to wipe my mouth.

"I'm sorry, Liam. I've dreaded telling you this story for years. It's a horrible thing to hear. I always thought Molly would be here when I did." Pa hugged me quickly and walked out of the room. I heard the front door open and close.

A few minutes later, I found him on the front porch packing his pipe with tobacco. The morning air was still cool. The wood slats of the porch creaked and groaned as I stepped. I sat on the porch swing, wondering if it was better not knowing. Now I'd be cursed with questions—why were we there? Did she die protecting us? Did she suffer? What was she like? Who was she?

"Why wasn't anyone looking for a woman and her three children?" The notion was unfathomable in this day and age of information. Surely, someone knew us. And they must have seen the news if it was as publicized as Pa said. I had no reason to doubt him. Pa wasn't the sort of man to embellish anything for the sake of the story.

He finished lighting his pipe and blew smoke out that drifted on the air around his head. He reached into the front pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a picture that he handed to me. "This is all they knew. She was in her late twenties-early thirties, long brown hair, and had that tattoo on the back of her shoulder."

I studied the photo. It was an abstract symbol of a wolf's head that wrapped around itself like the smoke from Pa's pipe. On closer inspection, I realized the smoke was really flames forming the shape that may have represented the moon.

My heart felt tight knowing that this was a picture from her shoulder. It was like almost being able to touch her but knowing I never would. "Did they show this tattoo in the news?" I asked, still holding the photo.

"Yes, but not a word. They were hopeful someone would recognize the art, to give them a lead, but nothing came of it. It was all very sad and peculiar at the same time." Pa held the pipe in his lips and stared out across the fields that made up our farm.

"If this happened in Tennessee, how did you and Ma end up adopting us?"

"That was all your mother's doing. Most of the story she told you was true. She didn't visit an orphanage, but she fell in love with three little boys when she heard the news. She pulled strings I didn't even know she had. Molly even reached out to an old boyfriend from college to make it happen." He smiled as he spoke about Ma.

It was the only good thing about this conversation—watching Pa remember the woman we all loved and missed.

"The next thing I knew, we had three boys to raise, and I had no idea what to do with you. But she did. And she helped me figure it out along the way. She loved you boys at first sight, but it didn't take me long to feel the same." His eyes became glossy again.

"You boys filled a place in my heart that I didn't know was empty." He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. I went to him and wrapped my arms around him and he let me.

"I love you, Pa. We all do. My wanting to know about our past doesn't change the fact that you're our father and Molly was our mother."

He squeezed me tight before releasing me. "Thank you, Liam," Pa said, then laid his pipe on the little table on the porch. "I'm going to get your bother. You can decide how and when to tell them."

Pa climbed down the stairs more carefully than I'd ever seen him do. He walked to his truck and climbed in. I headed to the barn to start my share of the chores with a heavy heart. It was up to me to share this news of our birth mother and our haunted past with my brothers. I could see why Pa dreaded the conversation. Telling the truth doesn't always set you free.

What really had me shaken was my mother's tattoo. I'd seen it several times in my dreams but didn't understand it. I may have even seen my mother. Now the dreams I'd been dreading could be a window into my past. Maybe they're suppressed memories. I had no memories before coming here. That was all I've ever known. Could I have locked them away?

And, do I really want to know what's hidden in the memories of a troubled childhood?    

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R.K. Close

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