They were on one person.
My father.
Every night inside, I rebuilt him in my mind—always in the same place. Sitting in his old leather chair by the bay window, porch light casting a warm glow across the deep lines of his face. In my imagination, he was always waiting. Always alive. Holding onto the version of me that existed before the arrest, before the headlines, before the world decided Eli Vance was guilty.
I ignored the diner across the street despite the hollow ache in my stomach. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t even look at the reentry address folded in my pocket.
I went straight home.
Or what I believed was home.
The bus dropped me three blocks away. I ran the rest, lungs burning, heart pounding like it could outrun time itself. The street looked familiar at first—the cracked sidewalks, the old maple tree sagging at the corner—but the closer I got, the more wrong it felt.
The porch railing was still there, but the peeling white paint was gone, replaced with a fresh slate-blue finish. The wild flower beds my father loved were trimmed and manicured, filled with plants I didn’t recognize. And the driveway—once empty—now held a polished sedan and an SUV, foreign and expensive.
