My heart was a storm of conflicting emotions when I received the call about my father’s passing. Anger, sadness, and a strange sense of liberation surged through me. My father was gone, and with him, the last tether of a painful past. But the nurse’s words haunted me: “There are things you need to know.”
I returned home for the funeral, a solemn affair overshadowed by Vivien’s performative grief. My father’s absence was palpable, an empty echo in the grand hallways of the house that had never felt like a home. I silently bid him farewell amidst the sea of mourners, most of whom were strangers to me.
