I didn’t like it when a new student appeared at our school – Yegor Andreev. He was very skinny, wore funny glasses. But most of all, I didn’t like the fact that this Yegor looked a lot like my younger brother, Kolka. He resembled him a lot in the eyes. Our father, also named Yegor, passed away two years ago. He went to work and never came back. My mother, Katya, waited for my father for two months, then filed a missing persons report. But there were no results, so she went to look for him. At that time, our neighbor, Aunt Masha, took care of us.
Mom went to the village where my father was. She learned everything from a local cook named Galina. Mom found out that my father really worked in their village. And then one day, he got into an inflatable boat and went fishing. But he didn’t come back. Probably, dad drowned. He was not found. Father had no documents, so no one informed our mother about it.
My mother returned very sad; after all, she became a widow, and my brother and I lost our father. At first, she behaved very strangely: she talked to our deceased father. But then, my mother came to her senses. She only cried at night. My little brother slept soundly, but I heard him.
And then one day, while cleaning the classroom, our new student pulled out a folding knife from his pocket that belonged to my father. This knife even had our father’s name engraved on it. I demanded that he immediately give me that knife. I couldn’t understand how he could have it.
Of course, Yegor refused to do so. After class, we waited for him with my friends and beat up Yegor. Even though he was very thin and small, he fought very well. The fight was serious. My brother Kolya got scared and ran after our mother. She came running and separated us.
I ran away and sat by the river for a long time. I only returned late in the evening, and I simply couldn’t believe it when I saw that Yegor was sitting at the table in our kitchen, and my mother was offering him tea and pastries.
I wanted to run away again, but my mother persuaded me to stay. Yegor went home after that. Afterward, my mother told me:
“Vasya, you are already an adult, and it’s time for you to know the truth. Yegor is your brother.”
Mom told me that our father had already gone to work in that village, and there he had an affair with Galina. So, he wasn’t married to our mother yet. When my father left the village, he didn’t know that Galina would soon have a child, and she would give him the father’s name.
For many years, our father was not in that village, then he came and found out that he had a son. Galina moved to our village after learning that she had advanced cancer and would soon die. She talked to our mother, and they agreed that our mother would take Yegor after her death and raise him as her own son.
“So, son, it happens in life. Take it! Yegor brought you a knife!”