A sense of awe mixed with an inexplicable sadness enveloped Mark. This room was a testament to his father’s intellectual pursuits and hidden passions, a part of Richard that Mark had never known.
The shock and disbelief of this discovery were overwhelming. This wasn’t the Richard he remembered, the man who told bedtime stories and coached his little league games. This was Richard the explorer, the scholar, the cartographer. This room breathed life into the stories his father used to tell him about seafaring adventurers and the lands they discovered, stories he had thought were just imaginative tales to put him to sleep.
He gingerly picked up a document, his fingers tracing the neatly inscribed words and drawings. It was a different world, a secret world that Richard had kept hidden from everyone, even his own son.
Why? Mark found himself asking this question over and over again. Why the secrecy? Why the isolation? And most importantly, why the sudden departure?
Tears welled up in Mark’s eyes as he realized the depth of the chasm between him and his father’s secret life. He felt an acute sense of loss, not just for the father he knew, but for the man he was now beginning to understand.