Caleb, a wealthy businessman, encounters a janitor at his workplace who remarkably resembles his late mother, who was thought to have passed away 28 years ago. Upon discovering through a DNA test that the woman is his biological mother, Caleb makes the decision to confront his father, who had misled him on her passing.
Monday morning was hopping. Caleb, 29, was using his laptop to peruse the annual report of his company while he sat in his workplace. Abruptly, a female janitor, probably in her late 50s, entered the building with cleaning equipment.
“I apologize for disturbing you, Sir. I’ll just clean up the floor in five minutes,” the woman said as Caleb glanced up and had the worst shock of his life: the woman in front of him was strikingly similar to his late mother, who passed away 28 years ago.
Caleb said, “Oh my God, it’s unbelievable.” With his eyes following the woman as she strode across the office, he murmured, “It’s okay…please come in.” “Uh, I don’t think I’ve seen you around before…but your face looks so familiar.”
With a smile, the woman turned around. “My name is Michelle, Sir. I started working here only recently. This town is quite small…maybe you would’ve seen me somewhere. But I moved here just two weeks ago.”
With suspicious brow furrows, he said, “I’m Caleb.” “Maybe you’re right, Michelle. I don’t know why, but I always feel weird when I see your face,” he continued, reaching for his coffee and spilling it on his laptop in the process.
“Oh no, not again!” exclaimed Caleb.
Michelle hastened to wipe up the mess at Caleb’s table, dropping the mop and said, “Don’t worry, Sir. I’ll clean it up for you.” She began using a handkerchief to wipe the laptop after rolling up her sleeves. At that moment, Caleb noticed a strange scar on her left arm.
As she turned to face Caleb, Michelle exclaimed, “There you go…your laptop is clean!”
He said, “This scar…Ha—how did you get it?”
“Oh, this scar…? Well, you may find it strange. But I don’t remember anything that happened to me over 20 years ago. I have amnesia…I don’t even remember my name. When I saw the name ‘Michelle’ on a billboard, I adopted it as my own…and I have no memory of how I got this scar.”
Caleb felt his heart begin to rush. “And what about your friends and family?” he asked Michelle, glancing at her left arm that had the oval-shaped burn scar on it.
Michelle said, “I don’t have anybody!” with disappointment. “Nobody came for me all these years…Not even when I was in the hospital. I lived a gypsy life and finally found a job here in this town.”
Caleb felt an odd feeling creep up his stomach. He was aware that a strange theory was going through his head. However, he was taken aback by Michelle’s scar and remarkable likeness to his deceased mother. “Michelle, you won’t believe this. But you look a lot like my late mother, who I had only seen in an old photograph,” he said.
“Oh my goodness, do I really look like your late mother?” Michelle froze.
“Yes…you look a lot like my mother…she died 28 years ago, according to my Dad,” responded Caleb. “She had the exact same scar like this. I know this is gonna sound crazy. But can we go to the hospital and take a DNA test together? I don’t know why I’m even saying this…but something is bothering me. Something doesn’t seem right…And I want to find out if there are any odds….”
Michelle thought about it for a short while. She decided to take the test with Caleb because, like him, she was interested in learning if they were related.
All that was present between them as they traveled to the City Hospital in Caleb’s car was a dreadful, gloomy quiet. Caleb was apprehensive about receiving a favorable outcome. In the event that Michelle proved to be his biological mother, he understood he would need to make a lot of arrangements and connect a lot of dots.
Caleb asked himself, “But what if I’m just assuming things?” “What if it’s just a coincidence…what if my mother is really dead…and Michelle is not my biological mother and just her lookalike?”
Caleb saw Michelle in the rearview mirror as he crossed the busy street and stopped in the middle of heavy traffic. Something about her eyes seemed uncannily familiar.
Caleb was compelled to dive into his recollections by something in her gaze. Sitting back behind the wheel, he thought back to the terrible day he and his father, William, were mending the roof when he learned a devastating truth about his mother.
Caleb was seventeen years old twelve years ago.
William, Caleb’s father, was showing him how to get rid of old, rotting wooden boards. “And…like this! See! You just twist the claw hammer and pull out the rotten plank!” That Saturday afternoon, they were working together on small home repairs.
William gathered up the worn-out planks on the lawn and exclaimed, “That was a good plank…can be used as firewood.” Caleb had grown tired of the endless fixes his father had taught him on the weekends.
“Dad, why can’t we just hire some carpenters?” he giggled. “…and pay them to do all this stuff? It’s so tiring…and boring.”
William pulled out another plank and laughed. “Champ, if we pay others money for the simple things we can do on our own, then we’ll go to rags like your Uncle Dexter. Moreover, we’ll become very lazy…again, like your Uncle Dexter! Now get back to work…And start pulling out the planks from the floor in the attic. We must replace them as well.”
With a squared shoulder, Caleb said, “Yeah…whatever.” As he was pulling up a board on the floor, he looked up into the attic and saw a piece of aged paper beneath it.
Upon picking it up, Caleb’s curiosity won out. It was an ancient, rumpled picture of an unidentified woman holding a baby.
Caleb thought, “Weird. Who is this woman in this picture? I haven’t seen her before.” He turned the picture over and noticed a signature that said, “Baby Caleb with Mommy. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart :)”
Caleb became uneasy and asked, “Caleb with Mommy??”
Those statements astounded him. The woman in the photo did not resemble his mother, Olivia, thus it seemed absurd that his name was mentioned on the back of a stranger’s photograph. Subsequently, Caleb noticed an odd scar in the shape of an oval on her left arm, which he had never seen on Olivia, his mother.
Caleb took the picture and, haunted by something, descended the attic to find out what was going on with his father.
Caleb walked over to William, who was busy marking the new wooden planks with a pencil. “Dad, what is this? Who is she?” Caleb said.
William gasped and spun around, asking, “What…?”
“I found this while removing the plank in the attic…Who is she?”
William’s face turned pale and his eyes filled with anxiety, as if he had witnessed a ghost. His face was filled with concern as he said, “Wh—Where did you get that from?”
“Dad…I asked you what this is. Who is this woman…And what does it mean by ‘Caleb with Mommy’ written on the back of this photo? Is that baby in her arms…me?” replied Caleb.
When Willam snatched the photo out of Caleb’s hand, he was completely stunned. He continued to stare at it. William’s expression darkened with uneasiness as he realized he had to tell his son the truth no longer.
Dropping the hammer, he said, “Come with me,” and strode to the kitchen.
Caleb hurried to follow his father. William went to the refrigerator, got a bottle of beer, and sat down at the dining table, tapping the glass nervously while staring up at his son.
William took a sip of his drink and continued, “Caleb, believe me when I say this,” his voice heaving with pain. “All my life…I only wished you nothing but good. I…I wanted you to be happy…wanted you to grow up into a successful man…achieve great things. I…and my wife, Olivia, we always wanted the best for you.”
Caleb was fighting a desperate attempt to hold back his emotions. However, his sight deceived him. He sadly said, “Your wife, Olivia? That means Olivia is not my mother?”
William bowed his head solemnly. Caleb’s inquiry was answered by his silence. However, William was forced to reveal the information that hit Caleb like a ton of bricks. “Yes, dear…Olivia is not your real mother. Your birth mother died 28 years ago…I…I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean to—”
The information appeared to have completely contradicted everything Caleb had previously believed to be true about his mother, leaving him stunned and stunned. Desperate to learn more about his mother’s tragedy, he broke William’s stillness and asked, “How did she die?”
William said, his voice choking with sorrow, “A car accident.” “It was nobody’s fault. Fate betrayed us…and your mother was destined to leave us that day. It was an unfortunate dark day in my life…one that I can never forget. You were just a baby. You needed a mother. I moved on with Olivia not because I wanted a wife. I wanted to bring you a mother.”
Caleb shook himself. However, he received the news like a mature boy after listening to his father.
He put his hand on William’s shoulder and whispered, “Dad…I understand that you wanted the best for me. That you didn’t want me to go through that pain of losing my mother.” “But you should’ve told me earlier…And I would’ve understood everything.”
William, unable to control his sobs, tightly gripped Caleb’s hand.
“It’s okay, Dad. Can you take me to her grave? I would like to go there,” Caleb replied.
William grinned and said, “Why, of course, dear!” “We will go there tomorrow, alright?”
William took a swallow of his beer and sat back as Caleb responded, “Sure!” and turned to go.
The next afternoon, Caleb and his father arrived at the cemetery. The youngster marched on the crumbling sidewalk behind his father, the hush of the tombs eerie. William abruptly came to a stop in front of an overgrown monument bearing the epitaph Sarah J. — inscribed on the cracked grave marker.
William said, “Well, hello, Sarah,” and started a cigarette. “Our son is here…he has come to visit you!”
Caleb realized that trying to control his feelings would not help. He then let them to flow from his eyes. He dropped to his knees and wiped his hands delicately over the overgrown tombstone, weeping bitterly.
William left his son alone at the tomb and went to get in his car. After sixty minutes, Caleb remained at his mother’s grave, discussing everything that had happened to him during her absence, both good and bad.
With a “Goodbye, Mom,” he got up to go. “I’m sorry again. Dad just told me about you. I’m still shocked…I’ll visit often. I promise.”
Caleb was startled out of his reverie by a loud car’s horn behind his SUV. Michelle leaned forward from the backseat to check on things after the traffic had cleared.
“Sir, we’re getting late. I think we should keep going,” she responded.
“Oh, yeah! Yeah, Caleb,” Michelle answered. “I’m sorry. I was just, uhm…thinking about something. We’re almost there.”
As he pressed the gas pedal and rushed to the hospital, Caleb thought, “If you really turn out to be my mother, then that means only one thing: I’ve been visiting the grave of a woman I don’t even know.”
He stopped in the hospital parking lot two minutes later and hustled Michelle inside. Michelle hurriedly followed him as he ran to a staff nurse at the reception.
“Excuse me, nurse…We’d like to take a DNA maternity test immediately,” Caleb replied. “I want the results as soon as possible. I’m ready to pay any additional amount. It’s urgent. I want the results today.”
Caleb and Michelle waited eagerly in the waiting area for the test results for a few hours. He broke the stillness by asking, “So, what is the last thing you remember from your past, Michelle?”
Michelle’s lips were pursed. “I remember opening my eyes in the woods. A woodcutter said he found me floating in the river,” she recalled. “…and then a hospital…when doctors told me I had amnesia. And now, this new life!”
Caleb’s thoughts began to torment him. Michelle could not remember or come to terms with any of the pieces of her history. The nurse came up to them at that point and gave them a file in his hand.
After reading, Caleb screamed, “Maternity rate…99.99%!” “That means…You are my MOTHER!”
She had the impression that she had been struck by lightning. Caleb pushed himself into Michelle’s arms and started crying, making her shake. Caleb exclaimed, “Michelle, you are my mommy!” “But why did Dad lie to me that you died in an accident at that moment?” he thought about. As they were leaving the hospital, he said to her, “I have an idea. Come with me.”
An hour later, Caleb and Michelle were staring over William’s mansion out of the car window. He inquired, “Are you ready?” to her.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Do you remember everything I told you? You know what you’re supposed to tell him, right?” asked Caleb.
Michelle exclaimed confidently, “Yes, I remember everything. Don’t worry,” as she got out of the car. Despite her nervousness, she summoned the bravery to approach William’s mansion’s front door and knock.
A few moments later, the door creaked open. Michelle greeted William, who stopped in his tracks upon seeing her. “Good evening!”
He exhaled, “Jennifer??”
Michelle laughed and said, “Jennifer? No, uh, I’m Michelle,” “I’m from Mayflower Cosmetics…I just wanted to offer your wife a gift set worth $150.”
“What? Are you kidding me? But how is this possible?” William shot back, quickly gathering his nerves.
Michelle grinned. She said boldly, “Oh, I guess you’ve confused me with someone else.” “Maybe we could’ve met before…or seen each other in the life I don’t remember! The thing is, I have amnesia. I don’t remember anything that happened to me over 20 years ago.”
“Amnesia?” William asked nervously after a protracted silence. “Well, perhaps you’re correct! I probably mistook you for someone else.” Michelle nodded while William gave her a thorough examination. “Never mind! You just reminded me of an old friend…Uh, I’m William, by the way.”
Michelle’s insides began to churn with anxiety as William held out his hand. William spotted the oval-shaped scar on Michelle’s left arm as soon as she shook hands with him. “Michelle…as I said!” she said. It reminded him of his late wife, who had the same scar in the same place.
William stared up at Michelle, scared, “No…this can’t be real.”
“Look, Michelle, I didn’t mean to offend you or something,” William replied. “Sorry about my behavior. I didn’t want to sound insensitive, you know! My wife is not home now. Maybe you have something for men?”
Michelle answered, “Oh, yeah, I do!”
William grinned and called Michelle over, “Hey, how about you join me for a cup of coffee? I could also see what you’ve got.”
She followed him inside after exclaiming, “Well, why not?!”
William enquired, “I was wondering…Michelle, how long have you been in this city?” as Michelle removed her outerwear and hung it up.
“Two weeks!” was her response. “I still don’t know much about this place…Oh, can I please use the restroom to wash my hands? I can’t touch the cosmetics with greasy hands, and my hands are a bit sweaty….”
“Yes, without a doubt! The restroom is right there…behind you. Just two weeks?” William asked, his eyes darting all over Michelle’s movements. “Well, welcome to our city! I’m sure you and your family love being around here!”
Michelle grinned as she turned around. “Oh, thanks! I don’t have a family as such. I live in a small rented house south of Main Street.…one at the end of the lane. To be honest, house rents here are insane…landlords aren’t considerate about single women with amnesia!” Michelle laughed as she washed her hands with soap.
William then led her into the silent, hauntingly dark kitchen. Michelle felt uneasy. Her terror was increased by the glinting knives in the rack. However, she chose to remain composed, as Caleb had instructed.
She turned to William and said, “Hey, it’s so dark in here.” “Do you mind if I just turn on the light?”
William answered, “Of course not!” “The switch is inside the….”
But before he could finish, he noticed Michelle flipping the light switch and opening the kitchen cupboard beside the entrance. When he saw her do that, he was astounded by what he was seeing.
William asked, “Michelle?” “I must say…you have such a great intuition. None of our guests were able to locate the switch until we told them it was in the cabinet by the door!”
Michelle came to a halt. She moved back, grabbing her purse as a strange, uneasy feeling fluttered in the pit of her stomach. “Oh, I’m sorry about that. I don’t know how it happened. I..uh…this place kind of looks familiar to me. I don’t understand how. Guess it’s another crazy day! I think I should probably go now.”
William chased after Michelle, saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Get back here.” However, as soon as he left his house, he noticed her getting into a beat-up inexpensive automobile.
As she got comfortable in her automobile, Michelle exclaimed to Caleb, “Gosh, that was close!” “Caleb, it seems to have worked! I thought I opened the wrong cabinet at first…but thank goodness I found the switch!”
Caleb said, “That’s great! Everything is fine.” “And don’t worry. I’ll be there before you reach. And yes…He is following you.”
After around twenty minutes, Caleb stopped a few yards away from Michelle’s residence. He watched Michelle get out of her car and head inside. A short while afterward, he observed his father’s vehicle pull up to Michelle’s gate. There was a brief hesitation before the automobile turned back and drove off.
From his car, Caleb contacted Michelle and said, “Mom, do as I say.” “I’ll come back in half an hour, okay? Lock all the doors. And don’t forget what I just told you…Tonight’s gonna be a game changer…and the truth will unravel itself!”
Three in the morning was the time. Caleb was waiting silently across the street from Michelle’s house in a car he had borrowed from a friend. It was a quiet night. The silence was broken as Caleb peered about by the piercing shriek of crickets.
The silence on the street was broken suddenly by the bright headlights, and Caleb saw his father’s vehicle drive up in front of Michelle’s gate. He pulled his hoodie over his face and watched William get out of the car.
William tiptoed into Michelle’s home’s private backyard in the dark of night. He surveyed his surroundings. He glanced at an open window on the balcony; it was eerily quiet and dark.
William made his way up the pipeline that led to the balcony and through the open window with a measured and cautious effort. The moonlight softly lit Michelle’s figure as she lay on the bed as he tiptoed into the bedroom.
William let out a deep breath and moved stealthily to the bedside, removing a shimmering Bowie knife from his leather jacket. William repeatedly stabbed the figure, targeting the chest and stomach.
The lights came on and the bedroom door burst open. With handcuffs, two police officers charged into the bedroom and declared, “You’re under arrest!” To William’s surprise, Michelle went with them.
He turned to face the bed, his eyes bulging with fear, only to find himself standing in a jumble of cotton and feathers. He startled as he quickly raised the blanket to reveal a terrifying sight: a human effigy underneath. “What—No—no, it can’t be—” he exclaimed.
William was handcuffed and taken to the police station by the sheriff, who declared, “Mr. Anderson, you’re under arrest!” He eventually broke his silence and admitted to the horrifying crime he had committed 28 years prior in the harsh questioning room.
It transpired that Jennifer had discovered William’s extramarital affair with Olivia, his secretary. William was the last person he wanted to happen to, and she wanted to file for divorce. He made the decision to get rid of her out of fear that it would damage his reputation and that he would have to share his property and pay alimony to Jennifer after the divorce.
William shoved her off a precipice when he saw fit while having a picnic in the woods with his family. He let out a sigh of relief and left the scene as soon as he saw her body fall into the river below. But regrettably, William did not wait a little longer to witness Jennifer, who had miraculously survived the fatal fall, being carried away by the current!