When my father died, I believed grief had already taken everything it could from me. I was wrong. It still had one final truth waiting—one that would shatter what I thought I knew about my past, my family, and myself.
The morning of the will reading was soaked in cold, relentless rain. The kind that quiets a city and presses heavily on your chest. I walked toward the notary’s office with my coat pulled tight, each step feeling like a step farther away from the life I once had.
My father had been my entire world. After my mother died when I was very young, he became everything—provider, protector, comfort, and stability. Or so I believed. In his final years, reality began to crack that image. Medical bills piled up. Old debts resurfaced. The modest house we shared slipped toward foreclosure. By the time he passed, eviction notices were already taped to the door.
I walked into that office expecting nothing. No inheritance. No safety net. Just paperwork confirming what I already knew—I was on my own.
The notary’s voice blurred into background noise until one word snapped me back to attention.
“House.”
I looked up sharply. “I’m sorry—did you say a house?”
He nodded and slid a document toward me. “A property your father owned. Not the one you lived in.”
Another house. An address I didn’t recognize. One my father had never mentioned.
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