Chapter 1
The house looked smaller than I remembered. Same gray siding, same cracked concrete walk, but the bushes my dad used to trim every Saturday had grown wild and blocked half the front window. I stood at the bottom step with my tan backpack strap cutting into my shoulder and stared at the front door I’d opened a thousand times, and for a half second I actually thought I could just walk in.
Then the door opened before I knocked. She filled the whole doorway.
Raynan didn’t look surprised to see me. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was perfect, her dark mauve blouse tucked neat into black trousers, pearl earrings catching the flat light. She didn’t move to let me past. She stood with one hand on the door frame, blocking the entrance like she’d been waiting for this exact moment, and the hallway behind her was the same hallway from my childhood, framed photos still on the wall, but it looked like a different house.
My name is Finnley Dennis. I was twenty-six and I’d just gotten off a Greyhound with everything I owned in that tan backpack.
That morning I’d walked from the bus station on Highway 31, past the gas station and the high school and the church parking lot, telling myself I was just coming home. My dad hadn’t answered his phone in three months. The last letter he’d sent went to the facility, said he was fixing the back porch, said he’d leave the light on. I told myself he was just bad at phones. I told myself the overcast sky and the cold wind blowing dead leaves across the lawn didn’t mean anything.
I got to the top step and she still didn’t step back. I could smell her perfume and the clean inside air of the house I grew up in.
She looked me up and down, at the gray zip hoodie over my white tee, at the backpack, at my face, and she said it flat, like she’d rehearsed it. “Your father died a year ago. This house is mine now.”
I couldn’t breathe right. My grip tightened on my backpack strap.
“Where is he buried?” I asked.
“Pine Knot,” she said.
One lie. That was all it took. She said it and turned slightly, like the conversation was over, like I should thank her and leave. I stood there with my mouth slightly open and my eyes starting to sting, and I said, very quiet, “You didn’t call me.”
She didn’t answer. She just stared at me, stern, cold, not moving from that doorway. And I realized if I didn’t leave, she was going to close the door in my face.
I left. I walked back down that cracked walk and didn’t look back until I hit the sidewalk, and when I did, the door was already shut.
Pine Knot was three miles out on County Road 9. I walked the whole way with the wind at my back and my backpack thumping against me. The cemetery sat on a low hill with bare trees and weathered gray headstones spread out under a flat cloudy sky. No shadows anywhere. Just that cool desaturated light that made everything look washed out. I walked row after row, reading names, my breath puffing small in the air.
Dennis. Dennis. I checked the office board, the little plastic box with the laminated map, the rows marked with numbers. I walked them again, slower. Fallen leaves stuck to my shoes. There was no fresh ground. No Dennis stone. No marker with his name, no temporary metal tag, nothing. I stood among those stones with my hands in my hoodie pocket and felt the doubt turn solid.
An older man in an olive work jacket came up the gravel path with a ring of brass keys jingling at his hip. Aged hands, dark shirt underneath. He slowed when he saw me.
“Findley Dennis?” he said.
I nodded before I could speak.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a yellowed envelope, soft at the edges, and a brass skeleton key with a paper tag tied on with twine. STORAGE UNIT 108. He held them out toward my open palm. The wind moved the tag a little.
“Your father told me to give you this,” he said.
I took them. The envelope was heavier than I expected. The paper was old, the color of tea. My fingers shook opening it. I unfolded the single sheet inside and held it with both hands and read the first line, brow furrowed, the cemetery blurred behind the paper.
May you like
“Son, if you're reading this, Raynan has already started lying.”
The rest of the letter was there, folded tight, the ink showing through faintly. The groundskeeper was still standing in front of me, keys in his other hand, watching my face, and I hadn’t yet turned the page.
