PART 2 – The Photograph Behind the Kitchen Clock

That night, my mother refused to explain what had happened.

She said she was tired.

She said the matter was complicated.

She said we would talk when she was ready.

I had heard those excuses before, but never about something that threatened to make us homeless.

After Noah went to bed, I searched the drawers where my mother kept important papers.

I found insurance documents, birth certificates, old tax returns, and a photograph tucked behind the kitchen clock.

The photograph showed my mother standing beside a handsome young man in front of a large country estate.

Between them stood an elderly woman wearing a pearl necklace.

On the back, someone had written three names.

Evelyn.

Thomas.

Victoria.

I stared at the photograph.

Thomas was my father's name.

I had seen only two photographs of him in my entire life, and neither showed him with wealthy people.

My mother appeared younger in the picture, perhaps in her early twenties.

She was smiling in a way I had never seen.

The man beside her had his arm around her shoulders.

He looked proud to be there.

I carried the photograph into her bedroom.

"Who is Thomas?"

My mother sat up.

For a moment, she looked as if she had seen a ghost.

"Where did you find that?"

"Behind the clock."

She reached for it, but I held it away.

"Was that my father?"

She lowered her eyes.

"Yes."

"Then why have you spent sixteen years telling us nothing about him?"

"Because some things are better left buried."

I shook my head.

"Not when those things are about to make us homeless."

My mother began to cry.

She told me that Thomas had once worked for the Ashford family.

He was a talented architect who helped manage several of their properties.

Victoria was his younger sister.

Their father, Richard Ashford, had treated Thomas as the son who would eventually inherit the family business.

Then Thomas met Evelyn.

And everything changed.

My mother stopped talking.

"What happened next?" I asked.

She looked at the photograph.

"Your father discovered something he wasn't supposed to find."

"What?"

She whispered a sentence that made my skin crawl.

"Proof that the Ashford fortune was built on stolen land."

Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Secret My Father Took to His Grave