The steam from my forgotten coffee curled up into nothing.
The cafeteria noise faded into a dull hum as I sat there, trying to remember the last time I’d felt like anything more than an obligation to my family. When had I become the son they tolerated rather than the one they celebrated? When had my sister started seeing me as an inconvenience rather than her big brother who used to check for monsters under her bed?
I thought about my father, gone six years now. Heart attack at fifty-two, sudden and brutal. I’d been in basic training when it happened, couldn’t even make it home for the funeral. By the time I got there, three days late, the house already smelled different—emptier, colder, like something essential had been extracted from the air itself.
Mom had been stoic at the service, accepting condolences with tight lips and tighter shoulders. Kayla, just fifteen then, had cried into my shoulder, asking me why everyone was leaving. I’d promised her I wouldn’t, that I’d always be there when she needed me.
That promise had cost me more than I’d realized at the time.
