But Linda didn’t blink.
“We live here now,” she added, gesturing vaguely into the foyer behind her. “So… you should go.”
My throat went bone dry, as if I’d inhaled a handful of ash.
“I—” I tried again, my voice cracking, my palms slick with sudden sweat. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t you call the warden?”
Linda’s painted lips curved slightly. It wasn’t a smile of sympathy—it was pure, unfiltered satisfaction.
“You were in prison, Eli,” she said smoothly. “What were we supposed to do? Send you a sympathy card to your cell block?”
Behind her, the hallway looked entirely alien. Different landscape paintings hung on the walls instead of the old family photos. Modern, glass-and-steel furniture was visible beyond the entryway. None of my father’s things remained. No canvas hunting coat hung by the door. No scuffed work boots on the mat. No familiar, comforting smell of cedar and the cheap lemon cleaner he used on weekends.
It was as if Thomas Vance had been systematically erased from the earth.
And Linda was standing in the doorway, proudly holding the eraser.
“I need to see him,” I said, a raw, animal desperation clawing at my chest. “I need to go to his room. Let me in.”
“There’s nothing to see,” she replied, taking a deliberate step back to close the door. “It’s over.”
Then, before I could force my heavy boots over the threshold, she shut it.
Not slammed.
Just closed—slow, deliberate, precise—like she was ending a tedious conversation she’d been tired of for a very long time. The metallic click of the heavy deadbolt sliding into place was the loudest sound I had ever heard in my life.
I stood there staring at the charcoal gray wood, my hand still raised in a fist, my body entirely unable to process the new, shattering reality.
A year.
My father had been dead for a year, and I was finding out on a porch like a trespassing stranger.
I don’t remember walking away from the house. I only remember the street tilting slightly, like the entire neighborhood had shifted on its tectonic foundation. I walked until my leg muscles burned, until my mind stopped trying to make the sentence “your father was buried a year ago” sound less aggressively final.
Eventually, my boots dragged me to the only place that made logistical sense.
The Oak Hill Cemetery.
It sat behind a row of tall, brooding pine trees, the kind that always look overly serious, like solemn sentinels guarding the fragile boundary between the living and the dead. A rusted wrought-iron gate creaked a mournful protest when I pushed my weight against it.
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