she’d just read it on the weather report.
“Where’s my dad?” My voice sounded strange, too loud in the quiet of that porch.
Linda’s mouth tightened, almost like she was annoyed I’d asked.
Then she said, calmly and coldly, “Your father was buried a year ago.”
The words didn’t land right.
Buried. A year ago.
The sentence made no sense, like someone had switched languages in the middle. My mind tried to reject it. I waited for the punchline. The correction. The cruel joke.
But Linda didn’t blink.
“We live
