Lost Boy

         "Is she my Mother, or my Step-Mother?"
 He stopped digging up the potatoes and turned to his youngest Son.
"She's your Mother and I don't want to ever hear another word about it. Do you understand?"
He said yes but he actually understood nothing. Why had his friend said  she was not his Mother? If she was not his Mother, then where was his real Mother? Maybe he needed to find her...


        "We are going to visit Aunty Mary in hospital. You boys behave yourselves and look after Joe."
"Sure Dad," but they had no intention of looking after Joe. He cramped their style. They fetched their bicycles from the shed and tried to sneak out the front gate without him seeing them.
"Hey, where you going? Wait for me."
"Forget it. You're too small to go with us. Go play with your train set."
He ran to fetch his bike determined to catch up to them, but by the time he got to the gate he could not see them and did not know in what direction they had gone. Kicking his bike he walked back to the shed.
         He looked around for something to do...maybe he'll find his ball his Dad had confiscated when he broke the window last week. He looked under the wooden workbench. It was the ideal place for hiding things. Maybe his dad had put it in a box? The first box he opened had old rusty tools and jars of nuts and bolts. The second box he opened was full of shoe boxes and the shoe boxes were full of old photographs.


        He sat on the cold cement floor looking at the photos of holidays they had been on. They used to go on camping holidays until his dad bought a caravan. He loved these holidays and loved looking at photos of himself and his brothers on the beach. The next box was different...the photos were older and his brothers were much younger, but what was this one?


         A lady was holding a small boy with two older boys at her feet. He began to cry. He carefully replaced all the photographs exactly as he found them and pushed the box back under the work bench. He took his precious photo to his room and hid it in his room. It would be his secret in a house that was full of secrets.