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A quote: “The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.” ~~ Voltaire
I’ll start with a story …
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Whenever conferences took her out-of-state, she hunted down the local second hand shops. Not really looking to buy but open to possibilities. She grew up in very modest circumstances, her dad traveling the country while mom and her made-do on a tiny budget.
She grew up successful but she was still drawn to these stores of past dreams and faded hopes.
She stood flipping through a stack of photos in a shoebox when one stopped her short. The smiling man in front of a Christmas tree was her dad. But the woman was not mom. And the child, not her.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: Can’t enter anything here. Getting an error but it’s not repeating on any other page.
Cameron says: I pointed at the first picture. “James, Abby, Alice,” the man replied.
Second one: “Martin, Jennifer.”
I paused for a moment. “And who are they?”
“Brother, cousin, sister, father, mother.”
Cameron says: I nodded at him. “Perfect score. I’m so sorry for this. I know things are rough but I promise that it’ll get better.”
Cameron says: “I know. It’s just still a lot to take in.” The poor man was from an alternate timeline and was still getting used to having a real family. I’d gone through the same thing so I was called in to help newcomers adjust to their changed reality.
Lewis says: I brought the photo I purchased at the thrift shop in a city thousands of miles away. I showed it to my dad. He stared at it, took it in his hand, ran his finger over the guy’s face, a strange look on his own face. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders?
We called the store, they knew who he was! He had a couple of kids they recalled. We found them, we called them, we exchanged photos, and DNA!
My siblings, my mom and dad,and I went on the train. Our aunt, our cousins met us at the station and took us to meet my dad’s twin brother!
Cameron says: Good story, Lewis.
Lewis says: Thanks! I like yours, too, it’s okay, I like chapters!
Cameron says: Sorry for the broken post everyone. It was not letting me post the whole thing at one time.
Darleen Click says: that’s weird… I’ll pass that on to our webmaster. WordPress belches now and then.
PS Good story!
Cameron says: Thanks. I really enjoy doing these.
If it helps: The site threw up an “unknown error” when I tried doing a copy/paste and when I typed the story out. As you can see, it let me break it down but then it failed again but I could post comments elsewhere.
How good it felt to be home. Although Drew Reinholt was actually posted in the Roosa Barracks at Grissom City, Shepardsport was where Brenda lived — and with their first child on the way, she’d been able to secure an apartment. No more overnights in the BOQ for him.
This late in the evening, the residential corridors were quiet. Drew cycled himself through the airlock and into the module. Even the lounge was almost empty, with only a couple of people sitting up late studying. They barely looked up at him before readdressing themselves to their tablets.
He’d almost expected Brenda to already be in bed, but no, she was sitting up and swiping her way through something on her tablet. A photo album, from the looks of things.
He leaned over her shoulder. “I’m home, sweetheart. What are you looking at?”
“Old family albums. Cousin Benny got them all digitized, and I finally managed to get them downloaded. This is Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Barnes when they were first married and just starting out.”
Drew studied the strange faces, the old-fashioned clothes. These people would’ve been Brenda’s father’s mother’s parents, so the fresh-faced girl in some of the pictures would be her Grandma Redmond.
Unsurprising that there should be so little resemblance between them and Brenda, given that her father was in fact a clone of Gus Grissom, implanted under the ruse of one or another medical treatment, back in the days when America’s Cold War cloning program was so super-secret that even the possibility of human cloning was still adamantly denied by every respectable specialist in reproductive medicine.
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