Morton stared at him, dumbfounded. His thoughts were stuck behind the mulish spikes that were piercing his brain, refusing to make sense of the situation. He looked to Juliette for explanation. She’d found him? Juliette’s expression and her casual shrug suggested otherwise. A coincidence? Definitely not.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ Morton replied, slowly standing. He looked again at Juliette for guidance. He’d spent so long thinking about the search for his father that he hadn’t stopped to consider what he might say or do if they were ever to meet. And yet, here he was. He looked very much like the photograph that Juliette had surreptitiously taken at his Aunt Alice’s house; his youthful face belied his sixty years. He was precisely Morton’s height, his dark hair having the odd smattering of grey. His chestnut brown eyes were warm and welcoming, but still Morton couldn’t speak.
‘The Missing Man,’ Juliette quipped. ‘Found, wandering Boston airport.’
In perfectly mirrored synchronisation, the two men opened their arms and stepped into an embrace.
Morton held him like he had held no other, as tears rushed uncontrollably down his cheeks. The long journey that had started when he was just sixteen years old, when his father had blurted out that he had been adopted, was over. His fastidiousness, his stubbornness, his forensic genealogy, had been rewarded.
Time passed, but he hadn’t a clue how much. He held on to his father and continued to sob wet puddles into his grey t-shirt.
Morton eventually let him go and took a step back, taking the proffered tissue from Juliette. ‘What…? Where did you come from?’ he managed to say.
‘I just flew in from Canada,’ he answered, dabbing his eyes.
‘But how did you know?’ Morton asked, breathlessly. ‘I can’t believe it…’
‘Neither can I,’ he laughed.
‘How?’ Morton muttered.
‘My sister. She told me everything after you stopped by her house the other night. I don’t think she believed you when you first contacted her, then when you showed up, she knew. She told me, then ran off to bury her head in the sand dunes. I must say, I was pretty shocked.’
‘You had no idea that Margaret had had a baby?’ Juliette asked.
He shook his head. ‘None at all. I wrote her a whole bunch of letters but she never replied.’
‘She…she never got them,’ Morton muttered through his sniffles. ‘Someone—her dad, I assume—intercepted them. Sorry, but I opened them.’
Jack nodded and smiled. ‘So my sister said—I don’t blame you—I would’ve done the same thing in your position.’ Jack looked at his watch. ‘How long do you guys have?’
‘Only about half an hour,’ Juliette said with a grimace.
‘How about we try and cram in as much of the past forty years as we can?’
Morton nodded, still trying to convince his brain to push past the combined barrier of pain and shock. ‘Less than a minute per year,’ Juliette laughed. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘I can’t believe it…’ Morton repeated, needing to sit back down. ‘I just can’t believe you’re here.’
‘You wouldn’t believe the hours of research he’s put in to finding you,’ Juliette said.
Jack smiled, sitting beside Morton and placing his hand on his leg. ‘Jeez—I hope I’m worth it—that’s a lot to live up to.’
Morton continued to stare at him, stunned. The man beside him, in so many ways a stranger, was paradoxically so familiar. It felt to him more like meeting up with a best friend after several years’ absence than the very first time that they had ever clapped eyes on one another.
‘So, let me see if I understand things correctly,’ Jack began. ‘Margaret was forced to give you up. Her brother and his wife couldn’t have kids and they adopted you? Is that right?’
‘Yes…’ he stuttered, ‘…that’s right.’
‘Is Margaret…is she still alive?’
‘Yes, alive and well. She lives in Cornwall. She’s married with two daughters. Happy.’
‘That’s good to hear. I often think of her and wonder what happened to her. I’ve got something you might like to see,’ he said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Here.’
It was a photograph needing no explanation. It was Jack and Margaret standing together outside the Farrier household on Canterbury Road, Folkestone. His biological mother and father together. They were leaning on each other, smiling, their fingers interwoven. ‘Wow,’ was all that Morton could muster.
‘It’s the original—I’d like you to have it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely—I’ve made a copy for myself. It just seems right that you have it,’ Jack said, patting Morton’s leg.
‘Thank you.’
Jack laughed. ‘I don’t mean to get too base, but that was my last day in England; you were in that photo, too.’
Morton laughed. ‘Saturday the fifth of January,’ he stated, recalling the exact dates of their visit from his research.
‘If you say so, then, yeah,’ Jack laughed. ‘I still can’t believe this. When Alice told me I thought she was kidding. Then she went on and on with so much detail I knew that it wasn’t a joke. My God—a son I never knew…I don’t know…it’s just unbelievable…so, tell me about yourself.’
Something—the pills or the shock, he didn’t know which—released the talons from inside his head; he could think again. He was aware that time was running painfully low and he had his own questions to ask, so he kept it brief, condensing great chunks of his life into small portions. He sped through his childhood, college and university, an overview of his career in forensic genealogy, and ended with meeting and marrying Juliette.
‘You’ve done very well for yourself,’ Jack commented at the end. ‘I’m real glad to know that you’re settled and happy.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And I guess you want to know a bit about me?’
‘As much as you can say in thirteen minutes,’ Morton encouraged.
‘Okay. So, after the fire on Christmas Eve seventy-six, I took off to stay
