New cars filled the driveway, shiny and unfamiliar, like the house had been claimed by a life I’d never been invited into.
I slowed down.
Still, I walked up the steps.
The door was no longer the dull navy my father had picked because “it hides the dirt.” Now it was an expensive-looking charcoal gray. And where the welcome mat used to be—plain brown, always crooked—there was a fancy one with clean lettering:
HOME SWEET HOME
I knocked anyway.
Not politely.
Not carefully.
I knocked like a son who had
