After the funeral of the only man who ever truly saw him, Rhys finds himself thrust into a battle over legacy, lies, and blood. As secrets unravel and loyalties fracture, he learns that family isn’t always who shares your DNA… it’s who shows up when everyone else disappears.
The day we buried my grandfather, the sky felt like it had taken the weight of my chest and stretched it over the clouds, tight, gray, and cracking. I stood next to his casket, unmoving, while people I barely knew offered practiced condolences and tight-lipped nods.
They touched my shoulder like it might break, like they were testing how grief felt on a person who had never really belonged to anyone but the man in the wooden box.
Grandpa Ezra had been more than a grandfather. He was my friend… my sanctuary.
And he was the only real adult who had looked me in the eyes when I spoke. My mother, Lenora, was always too distracted to hear me, flitting between charity events and her ever-ringing phone.
My father had drowned himself in bourbon years ago, long before his liver finally gave out.
I’d never said it out loud but some part of me had always felt different… like I didn’t quite match the blueprint of the man I was told was my father. My sister, Marianne, had spent our entire childhood cultivating the kind of silent resentment that bloomed in shadows and poisoned everything it touched.
But my grandfather? He loved me.
Not out of obligation or guilt, he just…
did. After the service, the air felt strange, like it didn’t belong to me anymore. It clung to my suit like smoke, thick with old hymns and unspoken tension.
People moved in clumps, murmuring condolences, sipping from white paper cups filled with bitter church coffee that had long since gone cold.
They offered sad smiles and stiff handshakes… but none of it reached me.
My mind was still back at the gravesite, my fingers brushing the cool edge of the casket, trying to memorize the texture of goodbye. That’s when I felt her behind me, my mother, Lenora. “Rhys,” she said, her voice tight with something that wasn’t grief.
“Come here a moment, please.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond.
She just reached out, her manicured hand closing lightly around my elbow, and steered me away from the guests. We ended up in a quiet alcove near the church’s side entrance, beneath a tall, narrow window etched with glass saints.
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