The Ties That Bind

Chapter 25

     Halloween was Lennox's favorite holiday. He and Larsen always held a big Halloween party in their basement and all of their friends were invited. The basement was decorated in black and orange, lacy spider webs and plastic skeletons. They had punch bowls filled with skinned grapes that looked like eyeballs. They went all out on the decorations and food. Everything was ready for the party; it was going to be huge.

     Lennox was helping his mother get Sammy ready for trick-or-treat; she made an adorable little wicked witch in a black floor-length dress with a black cape and a old-fashioned broom that was just the right size for her. Her face was painted green, and she had a big, fake nose with a prominent wart at the tip.

     "Len," his mother looked over at him. "Can you go up to my closet and get me the yellow hat box that's up there? It should be on the top shelf in the back; there's an old hat in there that will make a perfect witch's hat."

     "Sure," the boy replied, and he winked at his little sister before going upstairs to his parent's room to fetch the hat.

     The box was on the top shelf right where his mother said it would be, surrounded by, and covered by a number of other boxes filled with who knew what. While pulling the hat box from its place, he accidentally knocked a small shoe box from the shelf along with it; the lid popped off and papers scattered all over the closet floor.

     "Oh shit," he exclaimed as he saw the papers, along with some old photographs spilled everywhere. He set the hat box down, looking inside first to make sure it was the right box, then began collecting the spilled contents and stuffing them back into the smaller shoe box.

     Just as he was about to stuff some of the photographs back into the box, he glanced down at the one on top and stopped, frozen in surprise. The photo was of his mother and another man... who wasn't his father. Standing in front of the couple was a little boy and they were all smiling at the camera looking like a happy little family. 

     The man in the photo with his mother looked like someone he knew, and it took him a minute to realize why; the man looked like Kasden, a lot like him in fact. The two could have been twins except this picture was old, and the boy he thought the man looked like was his own age; this man was clearly his mother's age since they were the same age in the photo.

     He stopped putting things back in the box, instead taking them back out one-by-one. He scrutinized each picture that he found intensely. There weren't many; only a few. The man was only in a couple of the other pictures, most of them were of the woman, or the little boy, or the two together. When he finished looking at the last photo, he was positive that the little boy was Kasden - he was older now, but it was clear that it was his friend. But none of it made any sense.

     If it was true, and the boy in the pictures was who he knew he had to be, why had he been raised in an orphanage? Why hadn't his mother said anything when he'd brought the boy home to celebrate after Larsen passed his tests? Had she not recognized him?

     The biggest question of all, now that he thought about it: Did Kasden know that Aletha was his mother? Did he recognize her? Was this the reason he declined every invitation to come over for another game night? Surely, he would have said something, right?

     The last thing in the box was a divorce document - for a Kenton and Aletha James - it stated that Aletha was granted full custody of the boy, Kasden James, and that Kenton's parental rights were terminated, and he was to have no contact with the boy or his ex-wife in the future.

     He was right, the boy in the photo was he and his brother's friend, Kasden; this document confirmed his suspicion, even listing the boy's name - except that Kasden's last name was Williams, not James. He leaned back against the closet wall, at a complete loss for what to do when his mother called to him from downstairs, wondering what was taking him so long.