Every night inside, I had constructed him in my mind, placing him in the same spot: sitting in his worn leather armchair by the bay window, the warm yellow light from the porch lamp washing over the deep lines of his face. In my head, he was always waiting. Always alive. Always holding onto the version of me that existed before the courts, before the headlines, before the world decided Eli Vance was a criminal.
I didn’t stop to eat at the diner across the street, though my stomach was a hollow pit. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t even check the crumpled paper with the reentry office address.
I went straight home.
Or what I thought was home.
The bus dropped me three blocks away. I ran the last stretch, my lungs burning, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs, trying to outrun the lost years. The street looked mostly the same—the same cracked sidewalks where I’d learned to skate, the same ancient maple tree leaning precariously over the corner. But as I got closer, the details started to blur into something wrong.
The porch railing was still there, but the peeling white paint was gone, replaced by a fresh coat of slate blue. The overgrown flower beds my father loved were manicured, filled with unfamiliar shrubs. New cars filled the driveway—a sleek sedan and an SUV—shiny and alien, like the house had been colonized by a life I’d never been invited into.
I slowed down, my boots scuffing the pavement.
Still, I walked up the steps.
The front door was no longer the dull navy my father had picked because “it hides the dirt best.” Now it was an expensive-looking charcoal gray with a brass knocker. And where the welcome mat used to be—plain brown, always crooked—there was a fancy coir mat with clean, scripted lettering:
