Race With a Heart
Chapter 175: Jack’s Story

Chapter 175: Jack’s Story

"I’m back," Lambert called from the door. He could see Kevin’s car in the driveway, so he knew his partner was already home.

"You have mail on coffee table!" Moore informed him from inside the house. "It must be something important!"

"Mail?" Jack was surprised. "Who sends mail instead of e-mail these days?"

But someone was doing it because Lambert saw a large envelope on the table in his name. When he saw the sender, his heart skipped a beat.

"You don’t open?" Kevin asked, suddenly standing next to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. His voice was warm and supportive, as if he knew for some reason that the information in the envelope was of great importance. "I wanted to talk to you about joining the Missing Persons Search program to find little Paul, but I see you’ve already done it."

"How do you know it’s about Paul?" Jack was surprised. "How do you know I wasn’t looking for other family members?"

"I do not know. You never talked about anyone else, so I assumed it was about your brother. I was wrong?"

"No," admitted Lambert. "You put it on well. I signed up for the program as soon as I heard about it, but this is the first time I got a letter from them. I waited for it for four years and ... "

"Why don’t you open? Have you changed your mind? Don’t you want to find Paul? "

"I’m afraid" Jack honestly admitted.

"Afraid? Of what? That your brother turns out to be a disappointment?"

"Are you insane? Even Paul is down, even if he’s in jail for murder, I’ll be happy for him to be alive... But if he’s dead? If a body is found and during identification ... "

"He might as well have grown into a beautiful, healthy man who just joined the program, so that’s why you had no information for years. Jack, whatever the envelope is hiding, I’m here with you. Actually..."

Kevin looked a little strange, but Jack didn’t paying any attention to him. The envelope lying on the table summoned him, causing terror at the same time.

Jack had waited many years for this moment. Now it had come, and Lambert was about to find out the truth, but he couldn’t shake the fear out of his heart. He silently begged the information he read to tell him Paul was alive. Just enough. Jack may never meet him, never see him, he may remain forever beyond his little brother’s life, but let Paul be alive, please, let he be live ...

His hands trembled as he took the envelope to them. His legs were so weak he had to sit up.

Please, please, let Paul be alive!

Jack began reading the document. When he glanced at the information, "We found your little brother in our DNA database. He joined the program..." tears streaked his eyes. "He joined the program", that is, he was alive! Thank God! Paul was alive and ... wanted to find him too!

"Paul is alive!" Jack laughed, his eyes full of tears of relief and happiness. "My Paul is alive! See!"

Kevin, smiling, took the document from him and read it. Yes, everything was right.

"Actually, I already know that," he said. "Have you noticed what your brother’s surname is now? Paul Denning. Sounds familiar?"

"No," Jack admitted in surprise. "And should it? Wait, I guess ... "

Slowly, before the eyes of Lambert’s imagination, the figure of a young policeman who was interrogating him in the Fergus’ Stables appeared. Was it...?

"Your new colleague?!"

Kevin nodded with a smile.

"Today at lunchtime, he opened his envelope with me," Moore admitted to Jack.

"And what?"

Lambert’s heart was beating like crazy. Even in his wildest dreams, he had never imagined that his brother was so close that he would even talk to him and work with his man!

But this discovery was terrifying! Paul has just discovered that his brother is someone he already knows and who is... a fagot!

"Does he know that I am his brother?" Jack couldn’t hide his anxiety.

"He knows. And he’s just a little less concerned with this information than you are right now. He is a bit scared to think his brother is so famous. "

"He knows I’m gay ..." Jack worried.

"And he figured out we were a couple," added Moore.

"What?!"

"He’s a smart boy. After all, he is your brother. He guessed about us without a problem. "

"And...?" Jack was impatient.

"He recognized that we are good brothers-in-law."

Disbelief, uncertainty and then relief appeared in Jack’s heart. But the doubt did not want to leave him at all.

"Are you sure he ..."

"I don’t think that’s really a problem for him. Remember what you said yourself that you would accept everything about Paul as long as he lived? He thinks the same. He just wants a brother. Besides, isn’t it your private matter, who are you sleeping with?"

"He wants a brother?" Jack asked uncertainly.

"Of course. Paul doesn’t remember much from his childhood, but he knows he was adopted. He remembered his older brother hugging him and telling him not to be afraid. The older brother who protected him. This description fits you, don’t you think?"

The brother who protected him - that wasn’t Jack’s description, though.

"But I didn’t keep us from being disconnected," Lambert said grimly.

"Do you remember how it happened?" Moore asked.

The driver nodded. He remembered, of course he did. It was one of the most difficult and most important memories in his life.

"Our parents got married very young, out of necessity," Lambert began to narrate. "You know, great love, accidental pregnancy and then reality. Romantic like Romeo and Juliet until pregnancy occurs and you have to start earning a living and a kid. They both blamed each other and me for their wasted lives. Especially the mother. I don’t remember if she was always like this. As a child I didn’t understand it, but now I think she was getting hysterical attacks. Father was no better. The second child was also unplanned. Mother stopped pretending that she cares for us and decided to live her own life. There were always fights in the house, but I had to look after Paul to keep him from being scared. One day the mother announced that she was leaving and started packing her things. Our father told her to take the kids she made. They argued a lot. Finally, the mother took Paul’s hand and left. It was the last time I saw them both."

"Jack, I’m sorry, I didn’t know ..."

"Soon after, my father got into a drunken brawl and was accidentally killed. The policemen came to pick me up from school and, after talking to the teacher, they took me to an orphanage. I asked them to find Paul, but I don’t know if they couldn’t do it or didn’t want to, I never got any information from them. When I grew up, I started looking for them on my own, but to no avail. I began to understand that my mother had mental problems and could do anything with Paul, even abandon him in the cold, or worse ... "

"It was a shopping mall," Moore explained sadly.

"My God, so however. At least she abandoned him in a warm place, among people instead of on a bench at the station."

Jack felt a sense of relief, but also a grim satisfaction and disgust towards his mother. Whoever said that every mother loves her child had to either be brought up in a happy family or be deeply confused. A mother in real life will easily abandon her children for her own happiness.

"Paul was quickly noticed and looked after by good people. He was adopted very quickly so he didn’t have a hard time. His adoptive parents are good people who gave him love a good upbringing and education. They loved him and cared for him. His adoptive father is now a high-ranking police officer, very respected. Paul was a happy child and is a happy young man," Kevin assured him.

"Thank God!" Jack breathed a sigh of relief as he felt tears welling up again.

Twenty years. It has been over twenty years of anxiety and uncertainty whether his younger brother is alive. Twenty years of guilt that Jack let his mother take him away. Sometimes he imagined that his mother had made a life with a man other than their father, that she had found happiness and peace with him that allowed her to take care of Paul. He imagined his mother would miss her eldest son, and someday, when her life was stable, she would pick him up at the orphanage and take him to his new family, where Jack and Paul would be back together. But the more days passed, the older Jack got, the more he got to know the world and the children left in the orphanage, the better he understood that his mother would not come for him, and his little brother ... could be dead.

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