I walked slowly down the hallway toward the front door while the hardwood floor felt cold beneath my bare feet and every step filled me with a strange mixture of hope and dread. My hand hovered above the lock for a moment because part of me feared that grief had finally twisted my mind into imagining things that could not exist. Then a soft knock sounded through the door followed by a faint voice that carried through the wood.
“Dad.”
My hands trembled so badly that turning the deadbolt became difficult, yet eventually the door swung open and the porch light revealed rain falling steadily from a dark sky. A young man stood on the steps soaked to the bone and shivering violently, and although his features reminded me strongly of my son the differences were obvious enough to show that he could not possibly be the same person.
“I am sorry for coming like this,” the stranger said breathlessly while struggling to remain upright, “but I did not know anywhere else to go tonight.”
I caught his elbow before he lost his balance because instinct forced me to help anyone who appeared that frightened and exhausted.
“They are searching for me everywhere,” he continued quietly while clutching the blanket I wrapped around his shoulders, “and you are the only family I have left in this world.”
“Who are you exactly?” I asked while guiding him toward the couch because confusion and concern tangled together inside my chest.
“My name is Daniel Morrison,” he replied with shaking lips and watery eyes, “and I believe I am your grandson.”
The word grandson struck me like a sudden gust of wind because Grant had never mentioned having a child during his life, yet Daniel quickly explained that his mother had confessed the truth shortly before her death from cancer the previous year. She told him that the man who raised him was not his biological father and that the real man responsible for his birth was Grant Halvorsen whom she had met during a summer job at a marina along the northern shore of Lake Michigan more than two decades earlier. Daniel said that curiosity drove him to contact Grant’s former fiancée, a woman named Cynthia Dalton, who invited him to visit her home in Chicago where she promised to share belongings that once belonged to my son.