My stepdad raised me after I lost my mother — just hours before he d*ed, he gripped my hand and whispered, “There’s something I’ve hidden from you your entire life.”

Questions collided inside my head.

Before I could ask a single one, Frank pressed a folded scrap of paper into my palm and pushed my hand away.

“Go there.

Now.”

Tears slipped into his gray stubble.

Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.

I stumbled into the hallway and unfolded the paper with trembling hands.

An address had been scrawled across it.

The house was only a short drive from Frank’s home — the place where I had spent nearly my entire childhood.

Every instinct told me not to go, but I couldn’t deny him his final request.