After the service, we were told the will would be read later that week.
I went, not expecting anything extraordinary. I wasn’t thinking about money or property. I just wanted to be there—to be acknowledged as someone who mattered to him.
That hope lasted less than a minute.
As I approached the lawyer’s office, his biological children stepped in front of the door. We had lived in the same house for years but never truly connected. Polite coexistence—that was all.
One of them spoke without meeting my eyes.
“Only real family is allowed inside.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
For a moment, I considered arguing. I could have reminded them who helped with my homework, who stayed up all night when I was sick, who chose me—again and again. I could have listed every ordinary, sacred act of fatherhood he carried out without hesitation.
But I didn’t.
I nodded once and walked away.
On the bus ride home, I counted stops so I wouldn’t cry in front of strangers. The ache in my chest wasn’t just grief. It was erasure. The feeling that a life I thought I belonged to had quietly edited me out.
When I got home, I sank onto the couch and let the tears come the way I’d learned to over the years—quietly, without spectacle.
Three days passed.
Then my phone rang.
It was the lawyer.
