Brent blinked.
The words did not land all at once.
My father understood them immediately.
“No,” he said again, louder this time. “You have no right to come here.”
Thomas Reed’s mouth curved slightly, but it was not a smile. “You told everyone I ran away, Arthur. I thought it was time I arrived properly.”
My mother pressed one hand to the wall.
And that was when my phone rang.
I was not at the house when any of this began. I was in a small hotel room six miles away, sitting beside my children while they slept under stiff white blankets, their faces soft and exhausted from crying. We had left my parents’ New Year’s Eve dinner just before midnight, after Brent told my son Lucas that “some kids needed to learn early that the world doesn’t hand out prizes to everyone.”
Lucas had only asked why his cousins got gift bags and he did not.
