Every morning, Marcus sat in the same chair beside Jake’s bed. Sometimes he’d read aloud. Other times, he’d talk to him like an old friend: about motorcycles, about baseball, about the weather.
He brought in Jake’s favorite stories — Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hobbit. He even told him stories about his own son, Danny, who had died in a car accident twenty years earlier.
“My boy loved bikes,” Marcus said one day. “Used to help me fix mine in the garage. He was about Jake’s age when he died. I wasn’t there when it happened. I’ve been trying to make peace with that ever since.”
He paused, voice breaking. “I couldn’t be there for Danny. But I can be here for your boy.”
That was the first moment I saw him not as a villain, but as a grieving father trying to make something right.
An Unlikely Friendship
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