My glass-domed friend did not let me down. I could there was a new scene being displayed as soon as I plucked it off the tree.

This image hit me harder than the rest in a nanosecond because of the first thing I was able to identify…the unmistakable image of the bright orange Sthil chainsaw hat my dad always wore. One of those guys who tragically started balding in his 20s, I don’t have a single memory of him in my brain where he wasn’t wearing it.

What I also didn’t have a memory of was the the scene the snow globe presented me. In the glass, I looked at my dad walking through rows of thick trees. Behind him, hiding in the cover of one of those trees, was my step-dad, in his usual blue Red Sox hat, holding a heavy axe.

All I ever knew about my dad’s premature death in his mid-20s was that he died in a logging accident. My brain always pictured the scene of a huge tree lying across his torso as he delivered heroic parting words to a co-worker in a scene that unrealistically contained no gore in the way it would in an old Western movie or black and white World War II film.

My dear friend the snow globe presented me with a different scene. A new narrative. One that suggested my step-dad took care of my dad and staged everything as a “logging accident.” Like Gram and Gran’s deaths, I now had horrifying concerns about the people I was sharing my life with who were listening to old Bob Dylan records in the kitchen and probably already five drinks in.

“Dinner’s ready,” my mom’s announcement from the kitchen told me I either had to fully trust the snow globe, run out of the house and call the cops or stick it out and hope the two of them didn’t have some sinister plan for me they were in the midst of hatching.

I went with option two. Even though option one was oh-so-tempting, it was beyond drastic and could have easily ruined my life had this whole thing been my imagination or incorrect. I would risk ending up in the looney bin. Do they still have looney bins?