Chapter 18
The main house felt the way it always did when he walked in.
The kitchen counter was mostly clear, a fruit bowl centered on it with a blackened banana. A dish towel hung over the faucet next to Publix flowers. In the living room, the couch cushions sat fluffed and misaligned, and a book lay facedown on its seat. The air smelled faintly like lemon cleaner and whatever his mom had been burning in one of those little wax warmers she liked.
The TV murmured at low volume, some afternoon program nobody watched all the way through, and the hallway light was on for no reason at all except habit.
His mom sat in the living room, sorting mail at the coffee table.
“You’re home early,” she said without looking up.
“Yeah,” Oren said. He stood there for a second like he’d forgotten what he came in for. “Do you still have that box of pictures?”
His mom nodded. “Hallway closet.”
“The one with my baby photos?”
“Mm-hm.” She ripped a flyer in half. “Top shelf.”
Oren went down the hall. He found the box pushed back behind a folded blanket, cardboard softened at the corners from handling.
When he carried it back, his mom had shifted to the end of the couch, mail spread across her lap. She glanced up, saw the box, and her mouth lifted in a small, pleased way.
“Careful,” she said, “Some of those are stuck together.”
Oren set it on the living room table and sat in the chair beside it.
He kept trying to force the two things to sit side by side in his head. Matthew Luz, dead four years ago. Oren Hale, standing in his parents’ living room, surrounded by photos that said he’d always been here.
His parents had years of stories about him, little scenes they could pull out whenever they wanted. If he were Matthew, those stories were either wrong or they meant something he didn’t understand yet.
Oren lifted the lid, cardboard rasping softly. Inside were envelopes from photo places, sleeves of prints, and a couple of albums with plastic pages that clung to his fingers.
Oren flipped through the pictures slowly at first, more out of habit than sentiment. A school photo with a too-big grin. A birthday with candles bent sideways. A Christmas tree with a gap in the branches where someone had shoved it too close to the wall.
He kept flipping, and the sameness started to press in. In picture after picture, the frame was clean. No adult knee at the edge. No hand reaching in to steady him. No shadow cutting across the grass or the floor. Just Oren, centered, like the photos had been trimmed to remove the person behind the camera.
He stopped at the lake picture.
The longer he stared, the more the details slid. The eyes were a fraction too wide-set. The mouth didn’t sit the same way as his mouth did in other pictures. Oren couldn’t tell if it was the camera, his age in the picture, or something else.
He turned it over and saw the barcode sticker on the back.
He flipped the next one. Same sticker. Same code.
He kept going, faster, quieter, until his fingers hit a photo from years later, and the code was still there, identical, like somebody had printed his whole life in one trip to Walgreens.
He said, “This is weird,” before he meant to.
His mom glanced over. “What?”
“These,” he said, holding one out, then another. “Why are they all from the same order?”
His mom set the mail down, slower than she had been moving a minute ago. Then she stood and walked to the living room table, her mouth frowning.
She took one, glanced at the back, and her hand paused before she gave it back. “Oh. We did reprints.”
“Why?” Oren asked.
“Because we wanted copies,” she said as if it were obvious.
Oren held the photo between his fingers and stared at the barcode, as if it might change if he looked at it long enough.
“Why would you need copies of, like, everything?”
“We wanted to frame some a few years ago,” she said softly. “You remember that.”
“That doesn’t explain it,” Oren said.
“It does if I ordered them together,” she replied. “I pulled out what we had and did one big reprint. It was easier.”
He looked back down at the photos. Then looked back at her.
“Then where are the originals?” he asked.
“That’s not how those places work.”
“I know you don’t get one code that follows you for sixteen years.”
His mom’s smile tried to come back, but didn’t quite land.
“Oren,” she said, and his name carried that warning softness parents used when they wanted a topic to disappear. “You’re winding yourself up.”
“I’m looking at it,” he said. “I’m literally looking at it.”
“We weren’t working off negatives,” she said, a little sharper. “We had files.”
Her face looked ordinary, composed, the way it always looked when she was trying to keep a conversation from turning into a fight.
“You’re tired,” she said. The sentence came out gentle enough to offer him an out.
Oren looked up at her.
His mom’s eyes flicked toward the hallway, behind them, like she was checking whether his dad was within earshot. Then she looked back at him, and her voice tightened a fraction.
“This is the kind of thing you drop,” she said quietly.
Oren felt his face go hot.
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t help you,” she said, careful again. “Because you’re working yourself up over pictures.”
“I’m not—”
“This is not normal,” she said, still controlled. “Put it back.”
Oren pushed his chair back. He stood so fast that the chair leg scraped against the floor.
“Fine,” he said. He shoved the photos back into the box with more force than he meant to. “Fine. I’ll put it back.”
The yard felt damp under Oren’s shoes. The shed waited with its little porch light off, the door slightly swollen from humidity, so it stuck before it gave.
Inside, the air smelled like dust and leftover coffee. Oren shut the door and stood there, keys still in his hand, breathing too fast.
He set the keys down hard on the counter.
His throat tightened. His eyes burned.
He hated himself for it, the way his body always picked the worst moment to be honest.
He sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until the pressure hurt.
A knock came a few minutes later, soft, careful.
“Oren,” his mom said through the door. “Open up.”
He stayed still, staring at the floor.
The knob turned anyway. She stepped inside like she was entering a room where someone was asleep, moving slowly so she didn’t startle anything.
Oren didn’t look at her.
His mom set down a plate on the little counter by the sink. He didn’t turn to check.
“I made you something,” she said.
Oren gave a short laugh that cracked halfway through and turned into nothing.
His mom stood there a few feet away, hands clasped in front of her, as if she were holding herself still on purpose.
“You’re acting like you don’t remember your own life,” she said, and Oren flinched at how close it got without naming anything.
“I was asking a question,” he said, voice thick. “That’s all I did.”
His mom didn’t answer right away. She sat next to him. “Yeah, you’ve been doing a lot of that,” she said quietly.
Oren shrugged.
“You didn’t ask questions like this before.”
Oren stared at the wall. The paint had a small scuff near the light switch, a mark he’d meant to fix and never did.
“I just want it to make sense.”
“We love you,” she said, like she was placing a card on a table. “You know that.”
Oren’s mouth tightened so hard his jaw ached. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and tasted salt.
His mom didn’t touch him. She stood up, close enough that he could feel the shape of her presence anyway.
“You were making real progress,” she said. “I’m not letting this turn into a thing.”
Oren finally looked at her then.
He’d heard progress in a dozen different tones over the years, always paired with that thin, careful version of his past: the year he didn’t finish high school, the GED they framed as a smart pivot, the shed as a quiet place to keep him steady yet independent.
His mom held his gaze for a beat, and whatever sat behind her eyes stayed locked up, sealed tight.
“Eat,” she said, too brisk, like she could reset the moment by changing the subject. “You have work tomorrow.”
Oren looked past her, at the plate on the counter, steam rising faintly.
His stomach turned.
He nodded once, because he didn’t trust his voice anymore, and his mom took that nod like it meant everything was fine.
She left the shed the same way she’d come in, quietly, closing the door behind her like she was sealing something back into place.
Oren sat there for a long time, listening to the house in the distance, the small sounds of a life that kept moving, and stared at his laptop until his vision blurred.
Oh man! There is definitely something up here with those photos. And I wonder how much his mom knows and doesn't know. You write such natural interactions. 💜 Probably said this before and will say it again haha! As always, phenomenal chapter!
I'm actually a little upset I have to go make dinner now and I can't read the next chapter right away. 🤣
Isn't Chapter 19 out yet?