Same address.
Different world.
Finnley looked at Reagan.
“Where’s my father?”
She sighed.
“He was buried a year ago. Cancer. Fast. Painful. It’s over now.”
The words landed harder than Finnley expected.
For a moment, he could barely breathe.
“And nobody told me?” he asked. “Nobody even tried to let me see him one last time?”
A faint smile touched Reagan’s mouth.
“Finnley, you were in prison for stealing from your own father’s company. Do you really think he wanted you ruining his funeral?”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“You said that during the trial. Nobody believed you.”
Finnley had heard those words before.
From prosecutors.
From people who had once called him family.
From strangers who had never bothered to hear his side.
But hearing them from Reagan now felt different.
Because she wasn’t simply reminding him of the conviction.
She was using it to decide whether he deserved to mourn his own father.
Finnley looked past her into the entrance hall.
The family photographs were gone.
His mother’s portrait was missing.
His father’s favorite hat was nowhere in sight.
Expensive furniture had replaced the pieces Finnley remembered. The familiar smell of coffee and cedar polish had disappeared beneath artificial air freshener.
“Let me in,” Finnley said. “I just want to see his room.”
“His room doesn’t exist anymore.”
Reagan’s answer came without hesitation.
“I remodeled it.”
Then Finnley heard footsteps on the stairs.
