When he was a young boy, John’s mother knew how people saw her. A single mother whose husband suddenly and without a single word just up and left his family. Heard from but one single time afterwards. People talked. They whispered, glanced across the supermarket aisles and avoided any eye contact. Jack had given absolutely no warning that anything was wrong. That he was thinking of leaving. Did he actually think about it? Was he dead? Was he here, walking around in this very town, incognito, watching their every step? Did he care at all that his son was growing up without a father? A boy needs a male role model. But maybe no role model was better than a bad one.

She knew that it was mean and wrong to tell John that his father had died but it was so much easier than telling a truth which she herself didn’t properly understand. When the letter came and when John saw the unmistakable photo of his father standing next to the statue at Gustav Adolfs Torg, exactly the spot where she and Jack had met so long ago during that strange blend of American Backpackers in Europe, she couldn’t bear to lie again.

“There it is then…He is alive. But for me he is dead,” she said. John never mentioned it again.

That was how she reassured herself as she pushed the cart through the grocery story while John stretched his arms trying to pull down cereal boxes and packages of cookies from the shelves. When she said that he didn’t need cereal or cookies he looked her straight in the eye and said, “They aren’t for me…they’re for Iggy.”

That damned Iggy. John invisible friend. Who the hell knew what type of role model he would turn out to be.

She knew that he sometimes caught her looking at him. She couldn’t help herself. He looked exactly like his father. She wondered if he trusted her, believed her. If the day would ever come when he would resent her for not telling him the truth, for not knowing the truth of why his father left.