The curtains had faded from blue to some tired gray color that only old sunlight can make.
There was a nick in the table from when I was twelve and dropped a science project volcano on it.
The kitchen looked smaller than I remembered.
That happens when you come back with money.
Everything from your old life looks smaller.
Until suddenly it doesn’t.
Until suddenly one cheap notebook can make your corner office feel like a playpen.
My phone buzzed.
It was Claire.
I stared at her name for three full rings before I answered.
“Hey,” she said, and her voice was gentle in that careful way people get when grief is supposed to make you soft. “How are you holding up?”
I looked at the closed porch door.
“I don’t know,” I said.
There was a pause.
“Has the funeral brought some closure?”
I almost laughed.
Closure.
There are words people use when they’ve never watched a family split open in real time.
“No,” I said. “Not even close.”
She waited.
Claire was good at waiting.
That was one of the reasons I loved her.
She was smart, composed, beautiful in a way that looked effortless, and she never pressed harder than she had to.
But she also came from the kind of family where pain got handled privately, efficiently, and with very expensive therapists.
She had never met chaos she couldn’t book around.
“I found out some things,” I said.
“What kind of things?”
“The kind that make you realize you’ve been congratulating yourself for the wrong version of reality.”
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