Chapter 2: The Faded Photograph
The photograph resting on the counter was yellowed at the borders, the emulsion cracked from decades of being folded and unfolded in coat pockets. It showed a younger version of myself, twenty-five years lighter and stripped of half the tattoos, standing outside an old clapboard garage with a beaming, tired smile. In my arms, wrapped in a faded blue blanket, was an infant no more than a few days old. The grease on my jeans in that picture was real; the sunlight hitting my shoulder was real. It was a ghost from a summer I had spent running from my own shadow, a life I thought I had buried beneath greasy engines and whiskey bottles in three different states. I stared at the grain of the paper, my fingers twitching against the laminate surface.
The boy kept his hand resting gently near the edge of the photo, anchoring it. His breathing was shallow, rhythmic, matching the nervous flutter of a bird caught in a shed. Clara drifted closer down the counter, her steps cautious, her professional smile completely gone, replaced by a tight, suspicious frown. She didn't say anything, but her presence was a heavy wall at my back. I swallowed hard, the taste of stale coffee turning bitter on my tongue. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to push the picture away, laugh it off as a coincidence, and tell the kid he had the wrong biker in the wrong town during the wrong decade. But the eyes looking up at me were my own staring back through a distorting mirror.
"My mom said this is you," the boy said again, his tone level, devoid of childish whine or accusation. It was just a statement of fact dropped into the middle of a noisy diner like a heavy stone into a shallow pond. My fingers hovered over the corner of the picture, trembling with a microscopic tremor that I couldn't control through sheer willpower. I looked from the boy's face back to the image of the infant in my arms, trying to bridge the yawning chasm of twenty-eight years in a single breath. The silence between us stretched until the hum of the neon sign sounded like a freight train. Without thinking, my hand moved forward to cover the photograph, pressing my palm flat against the paper to hide it from view. Clara’s eyes narrowed further, her gaze darting from my face to the boy and back again.
