When Andrew Roark came home after a twelve-hour electrical job, he found a thin little boy sitting beneath the maple tree in his yard. The boy lifted his head, and Andrew dropped his tool belt into the grass. It was Harry — his son, the child everyone said had drowned five years ago. But when Andrew held him, Harry whispered, “Dad, it wasn’t an accident.”

Part 3 – Ending:

Betty stood at the top of the basement stairs in her bathrobe, holding the railing like her knees might give out.

Andrew kept taking pictures.

The mattress.

The lock.

The covered window.

The children’s books stacked in a milk crate.

The drawings taped to the wall.

One drawing stopped him.

It showed three stick figures.

One was labeled Dad.

One was labeled Me.

The third stood far away on the other side of the paper.

Mom.

Andrew folded the drawing carefully and placed it in his jacket pocket.

Betty watched him do it.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Mary and I were trying to protect him.”

Andrew stopped.

The words were small, but they opened the whole room.

“Mary and you?”

Betty’s face went pale.

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“She’s my daughter,” Betty whispered. “What was I supposed to do?”

Andrew looked at the basement door, at the lock on the outside, at the place where his son had spent five years believing his father did not want him.

“You were supposed to tell the truth,” he said.

He drove home with the photos on his phone and the drawing folded inside his jacket.

When he walked into the kitchen, Harry was sitting at the table with a bowl of cereal in front of him.