When I saw my wife’s newest “friend” over for dinner, I knew I had 60 seconds to leave…

When I saw my wife’s newest friend over for dinner, I knew I had 60 seconds to leave. He was wearing my father’s watch, the one buried with him. Last month, six feet under. The moment I recognized the watch, my entire body went cold. Not figuratively cold, I mean my fingers actually went numb, like someone had dunked my hands in ice water because I was looking at a dead man’s Rolex on a living man’s wrist, and the dead man was my father, and I had personally placed that watch on his body 26 days ago.

 My wife was setting the table in our dining room like this was completely normal. cloth napkins, the good china we only used for holidays, candles lit like we were celebrating something. The whole scene was staged. I just didn’t know for what yet. Honey, this is Derek from my book club. She smiled at me.

 That warm smile I’d fallen in love with 7 years ago. I’ve told you about him. She hadn’t, not once. Not a single mention in the 14 months she’d supposedly been attending this book club every Thursday night. I knew this because I have an excellent memory for details. It’s what made me good at my job as a civil engineer.

 I remember specifications, measurements, names. I remember everything. Dererick extended his hand across the table. Big smile, firm grip, easy confidence. Great to finally meet you, man. Your wife talks about you all the time. That’s when I saw it clearly. The candle light caught the gold bezel just right. My father’s 1,985 Rolex Submariner.

 The one with the scratched crystal from when he dropped it on the concrete floor of his workshop in 1987. The one with the broken clasp he’d fixed himself with a tiny piece of copper wire because he said paying a jeweler $200 was highway robbery. The one with a faded loom on the dial because he’d died. Worn it every single day for 38 years.

 I’d know that watch anywhere on earth. I’m the one who slid it onto his cold, stiff wrist at Morrison and son’s funeral home. I picked it out specifically because he told me once after his third bourbon that he wanted to be buried with it. When I go, he’d said, “I want that watch with me. Your mother gave it to me on our fifth anniversary.

 It goes where I go.” So I honored his wish. I watched them close the casket. I watched them lower it into the ground at Riverside Memorial Cemetery. I threw the first handful of dirt onto the polished mahogany lid. That was 26 days ago. My throat went completely dry. I tried to swallow and couldn’t. That’s a nice watch, I heard myself say.

 My voice sounded far away, like it was coming from another room. Derek glanced down at his wrist with practiced casualness. Thanks, man. Family heirloom been passed down for generations. My grandfather wore it in Korea. [ __ ] That watch was 6 ft underground at Riverside Memorial Cemetery. Plot 247, section C, row 12.

 I had the burial deed in my filing cabinet upstairs, unless it wasn’t anymore. My wife was pouring wine now, a 2019 Cas Cabernet that cost $80 a bottle. We never drank wine that expensive on a random Tuesday. Her movements were too smooth, too rehearsed, like she’d practiced this exact choreography. Dererick’s been such a good friend to me since your dad passed, she said.

 Not looking at me really helped me through the grief since the word detonated in my brain like a flashbang. They met after my father died, which meant they met within the last 26 days, which meant this man, this stranger wearing my dead father’s watch had somehow become close enough to my wife in less than a month to warrant a candle at dinner with the good china.

None of this made sense, unless all of it made sense. And the picture it painted was so horrifying that my brain was refusing to assemble the pieces. I needed to get out of this house. My phone was in my car. I’d left it charging on the passenger seat when I pulled into the driveway. The police needed to know that someone had violated my father’s grave. That was a felony.

Description of a corpse. I remembered that from somewhere. I forgot something in my car, I said, already moving toward the foyer. Be right back. My wife’s smile vanished like someone had flipped a switch. Can’t wait. Dinner’s getting cold. I made your favorite. The brazed short ribs.

 She never made braised short ribs. She’d made them exactly once in 7 years. For my birthday 3 years ago, and complained the entire time about how the recipe took 6 hours. Just need to grab my phone charger, I said, not stopping. 30 seconds. Dererick stood up from the table. His chair scraped against the hardwood floor with a sound like a warning. He moved.

 casually too casually to position himself between me and the front door. Not blocking it exactly, just occupying the space. Actually, he said, and his voice had changed, dropped half an octave, lost all its friendliness. I think we should all sit down and have a conversation first, don’t you? My heart was a jackhammer against my ribs. Move out of my way.

Your wife has something she needs to tell you. He crossed his arms over his chest. The watch caught the candle light again, and I felt bile rise in my throat. That was my father’s watch. My father, who raised me alone after my mother died when I was six. My father, who taught me to ride a bike and throw a football and change a tire.

 My father, who I’d buried less than a month ago after a car accident that the police said was caused by brake failure. Brake failure. Oh god. Oh my god. I turned slowly to look at my wife. Her face had transformed. The warmth was gone. The softness erased. Her expression was ice cold, clinical, like she was observing a lab specimen.

 Like she’d been wearing a mask for 7 years and had finally decided to take it off. We know you know, she said quietly. Her voice was different. Flat, effectless. I can see it in your face. You recognize the watch. What did you do? The words came out as a whisper. Dererick pulled out his phone, thumb to the photo gallery and turned the screen toward me.

 The image hit me like a physical blow. My father’s casket. The polished mahogany lit open. The white satin lining visible. His navy blue suit still perfectly arranged. The casket was empty. Your dad had a massive life insurance policy. My wife continued in that dead mechanical voice. $2 million. But there was a catch.

 The policy only paid out for accidental death. Natural causes would have triggered a different payout structure. Much smaller, only 300,000. I couldn’t breathe. The room was starting to spin. The edges going gray. “What did you do?” I asked again, “Louder this time. Car accidents are so tragically common,” she said.

 She picked up her wine glass and took a slow, contemplative sip. Especially for older men, especially on winding mountain roads. Brake lines corrode. They fail. These things just happen. Derek was smiling now. Actually smiling like he was enjoying this. Like watching my world collapse was entertainment. We waited 3 weeks after the funeral.

 Let you grieve properly. Made sure the insurance money cleared into your joint account. That took about 10 days. another week to confirm no investigation was coming. Then the plan was simple. I’d take my cut, disappear to Costa Rica, and you’d never see me again. Your wife would comfort you through your loss, and eventually she’d suggest a fresh start somewhere new, maybe selling the house, moving away from the memories, but Dererick got sentimental.

My wife shot him a look of pure, venomous contempt. Kept a souvenir he wasn’t supposed to keep. I told him to leave everything in the casket, the watch, the ring, all of it. But he just couldn’t resist. It’s a Rolex, Derek said defensively. A vintage Submariner in near mint condition. That’s worth 40 grand easy.

 You wanted me to leave 40 grand in the ground? I wanted you to follow the plan. Her voice could have frozen water. Now we have a complication. I was backing toward the door now. My legs moving on autopilot while my brain screamed at me to run. You killed my father. You murdered him for insurance money. We helped him along. She shrugged.

 The casualness of the gesture made my stomach heave. Like she was talking about putting down a sick dog. He was 72. He had high blood pressure and bad knees and he was going to leave everything to that stupid animal shelter anyway. You know, he changed his will last year. left almost his entire estate to the Riverside Animal Rescue.

 You would have gotten the house and maybe 50,000 in savings. This way, you inherit the full insurance payout. We split it three ways. Everyone wins except my father is dead. You murdered him. You cut his break lines and killed him. Semantics. She waved her hand dismissively. He was going to die eventually. We just accelerated the timeline and made sure it happened in a way that was financially beneficial to everyone involved.

 Dererick stepped closer to me, crowding my space, using his size to intimidate. He was bigger than me, maybe 6 to 2, 200 lb. I’m 5 to 10 and 170 soaking wet. If this turned physical, I was going to lose. Here’s what’s going to happen, he said, his voice low and reasonable, like he was explaining something to a child.

 You’re going to walk upstairs, take a Xanax, take a sleeping pill, whatever helps you relax, go to bed, we’re going to finish our wine, have a pleasant evening, and leave through the back door around midnight. You’ll wake up tomorrow, and this will all feel like a bad dream. You keep your share of the money that’s still over $600,000 after we take our cuts.

 You never mention this to anyone and we all go on with our lives. Simple. And if I don’t, my wife set down her wine glass. When she spoke, her voice dropped to barely a whisper. Intimate and terrifying. Then you have a tragic accident, too. Grief makes people do terrible things. Marcus, sometimes widowers can’t cope with the loss. They spiral. They drink too much.

 They take too many pills. An entire bottle of oxycodone. You still have your father’s prescription in the medicine cabinet, don’t you? So sad, so preventable. Your brother would inherit everything. And he’s not nearly as observant as you are. The threat hung in the air like poison gas. I calculated my options in a fraction of a second.

 The front door was 12 feet away, blocked by Derek. The back door was through the kitchen, passed my wife. The windows were old and painted shut. I’d been meaning to fix them for 2 years. My phone was in the car. The house phone was in the kitchen. I was trapped unless I wasn’t. I bolted for the front door. I didn’t try to go around Derek.

 I went straight at him, dropping my shoulder like I was back on my high school football team. I’m not a big guy, but I’m fast. And I had pure adrenalinefueled terror propelling me forward. He wasn’t expecting it. My shoulder caught him in the solar plexus, and I heard the breath explode out of him as he stumbled backward.

 But he was bigger, stronger, and he recovered fast too fast. His hand clamped around my arm and yanked me backward with brutal force. I hit the hardwood floor so hard my vision went white. All the air left my lungs. Before I could even try to get up, he was on top of me, his knee grinding into my chest, his hands reaching for my throat.

 Stupid, he grunted, his fingers closed around my neck. So [ __ ] stupid. We gave you an out. We gave you a choice. You could have walked away with 600 grand and a dead father. you were going to lose eventually anyway, but you had to make it difficult. I couldn’t breathe. His hands were like iron bands crushing my windpipe.

 My vision was starting to tunnel. Darkness creeping in from the edges. I clawed his wrists, but I might as well have been trying to move concrete. “This is it,” I thought. “I’m going to die on my own floor, murdered by the same people who killed my father, and no one will ever know the truth.” That’s when the front door exploded inward. The frame splintered.

 The dead bolt tore through the wood like it was cardboard. And then there were flashlights, blinding everywhere, and voices shouting commands that echoed off the walls. Police hands where we can see them. Now get on the ground. Dererick’s hands released my throat. I sucked in air, my lungs burning, my vision swimming with spots.

 I heard my wife scream something. Not words, just a sound of pure rage and disbelief and then the crash of breaking glass. Her wine glass hitting the floor, red spreading across the hardwood like blood. I looked up, still gasping, still trying to make sense of what was happening. My brother Eric was standing in the doorway behind six police officers in tactical gear.

 He was holding up his phone, the screen facing the room, the red recording dot visible even from where I lay on the floor. Got everything, he said. His voice was shaking, but his hand was steady. Every single word. It took me 3 days to piece together what had happened. Three days of police interviews and hospital visits and the kind of emotional shock that makes time move strangely, stretching some moments into hours and compressing others into nothing.

 Eric told me later over coffee in the hospital cafeteria while I was being treated for the bruising on my throat that he’d suspected something was wrong from the beginning. It was the brake lines, he said, staring into his cup like it held answers. Dad was obsessive about car maintenance. He had that Buick serviced every 3,000 miles like clockwork.

 New brake pads every 18 months, whether they needed it or not. He would have noticed if something was wrong. You didn’t say anything at the funeral. What was I going to say? Hey, sorry. Our father is dead, but I think maybe someone murdered him. I had no proof. Just a feeling that something didn’t add up.

 He took a long drink of his coffee, so I started watching, paying attention. Waiting. Waiting for what? I didn’t know something. Anything. He set the cup down. Then I saw your wife at Whole Foods 3 weeks ago. She was with a guy, tall, dark hair, expensive watch. They weren’t being obvious about it. No handholding or anything, but the body language was wrong.

 The way she leaned into him when she talked, the way he touched her elbow when they walked. That’s not how you act with someone from a book club. You followed them? I followed him. Watched him get into a silver BMW with Nevada plates. Ran the plates through a buddy of mine at the DMV. Don’t ask how. It’s technically illegal. And got a name, Derek Vance.

Then I started digging. Eric had always been the more suspicious of the two of us. He’d spent eight years as a military police investigator before mustering out and opening his own private security firm. He knew how to follow people, how to run background checks, how to gather evidence without being detected.

 Skills I’d always thought were paranoid and unnecessary until they saved my life. Derek Vance has a record. Eric continued, “Nothing violent, mostly fraud, identity theft, a couple of insurance scams that never went to trial, but the pattern was clear. He’s a professional. He finds vulnerable targets, gains their trust, helps them make money disappear through accidents and unfortunate circumstances.

 Your wife wasn’t his first. I found connections to at least three other suspicious deaths over the past decade. All ruled accidental. All resulting in large insurance payouts, all involving a widow or widowerower who suddenly had access to a lot of cash. I felt sick. How long had they been planning this? Best I can tell, about 18 months.

 That’s when your wife first contacted Derek through an online forum, one of those dark websites for people looking to hire problem solvers. The messages were encrypted, but the FBI managed to crack them. He paused. She’d been planning to kill dad for over a year. Marcus, probably before you even knew he’d changed his will.

 I thought about the last 18 months, all the dinners, the holidays, the Sunday brunches at my father’s house, where my wife had laughed at his jokes and helped him in the kitchen and asked about his garden. All of it performance, all of it calculated. What happens now? I asked. Now the system takes over.

 Detective Rhonda Vasquez, 23 years with the Portland Police Department’s major crimes unit, became the lead investigator on my father’s case. I met her formerly two days after the arrest in a conference room at the Justice Center downtown. Mr. Whitfield, she said, sliding a folder across the table toward me.

 I want you to understand something before we go any further. This investigation is bigger than your father’s death. Derek Vance is connected to a network of insurance fraud cases spanning four states. The FBI is involved. The Insurance Crimes Bureau is involved. What happened to your father isn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a pattern that may have resulted in as many as nine deaths over the past 15 years.

 Nine deaths, nine families destroyed, nine people who trusted the wrong person and paid for it with their lives. What do you need from me? Everything. Every interaction you had with your wife that might seem relevant now. Every conversation about money, insurance, your father’s estate, every time something felt off, even if you couldn’t explain why.

 I spent the next six hours in that room going through my marriage with a forensic archaeologist. precision. Detective Vasquez recorded everything, took notes, asked follow-up questions that forced me to examine moments I’d never thought twice about. The time two years ago, when Caroline had casually asked about my father’s insurance situation, just making conversation, she’d said, “My parents are getting older, too.

 It’s smart to know these things.” The time 18 months ago, when she’d suggested we have dinner with my father more often. Family is important, she’d said, “We should spend more time with him while we still can.” the time 6 months ago when she’d offered to help my father with some paperwork, legal stuff, estate planning.

 She’d explained, “You know how he hates dealing with lawyers. I told him I’d translate the jargon for him. I thought she was being kind, thoughtful. I’d actually loved her more for it. She was mapping his finances.” Detective Vasquez said when I finished learning his routines, his vulnerabilities, his insurance coverage, building a complete picture of how to profit from his death, and I helped her. I gave her access.

 I trusted her. You were her husband. You were supposed to trust her. Detective Vasquez’s voice softened slightly. This isn’t your fault, Mr. Whitfield. These are professional predators. They’re experts at deception. Your wife fooled you because fooling people is what she does. What she’s been doing for years.

The file she’d brought contained photographs. Evidence collected from the scene and from subsequent searches of my home, Dererick’s rental property, and a storage unit they’d kept in Clackamos County. My father’s body had been recovered from a shallow grave in a rural area outside Molala. Dererick had apparently dug it up the night after the funeral, the funeral I’d attended, grieving the man I thought had died in a tragic accident.

 He’d removed the watch and the gold wedding ring my father had worn for 43 years, then rearied the body in a location where he assumed it would never be found. But Detective Vasquez had been thorough. A forensic team with ground penetrating radar had searched every property associated with Derek Vance and found the grave within 72 hours of the arrest.

 The medical examiner is conducting a full autopsy, she explained. Given the advanced state of decomposition, we may not be able to prove the break line tampering conclusively, but we don’t need to. We have the recordings your brother made. We have the confession your wife made in your living room. We have evidence of the conspiracy, the financial planning, the previous victims.

 They’re going away for a very long time. Dr. Nathan Choy, the forensic pathologist who conducted my father’s second autopsy, delivered his findings 3 weeks after the exumation. I wasn’t required to be present for his testimony, but I needed to hear it. I needed to understand exactly what they’ done. The victim’s body showed signs of extreme cervical trauma consistent with a high-speed vehicle collision, Dr.

 Choy explained, addressing the courtroom during the preliminary hearing. However, upon closer examination of the vehicle itself, which was recovered from the salvage yard where it had been towed after the accident, I discovered clear evidence of tampering with the brake system. He displayed photographs on the courtroom screen, close-ups of brake lines, metal components, mechanical systems I didn’t fully understand.

 The brake fluid reservoir had been contaminated with a petroleum based substance that caused the rubber seals to degrade rapidly. Additionally, the brake lines themselves showed tool marks consistent with deliberate weakening. The lines were scored not deeply enough to cause immediate failure, but enough to ensure catastrophic failure under stress, such as, for example, attempting to break on a steep downhill grade, Highway 26, heading toward the coast.

 My father had been driving to his favorite fishing spot. He’d made that drive a 100 times. In my professional opinion, Dr. Choy concluded the vehicle’s brake system was deliberately sabotaged. The failure was not accidental. It was engineered. I closed my eyes. I’d been at work when I got the call from the state police.

 I’d driven to the scene to the twisted wreckage at the bottom of the ravine and I’d stood there in the rain and asked God why. Why him? Why now? Why like this? Now I knew not God, not fate, not the random cruelty of the universe. My wife, her lover, a plan 18 months in the making. FBI special agent Carmen Torres was the one who finally explained the full scope of the investigation.

 She drove down from the Seattle field office to meet with me personally. A professional courtesy she said I’d earned by nearly dying to expose a criminal conspiracy. Derek Vance, real name, Derek Michael Holloway, has been on our radar for almost a decade, she said. We were sitting in my living room, the same room where he tried to strangle me 3 weeks earlier. I hadn’t moved the furniture.

 I didn’t know why. Maybe I needed the reminder. He operates as a kind of freelance consultant for people looking to commit insurance fraud. Usually, it’s arson. Burn down a business, collect the payout. But occasionally, for the right price, he facilitates more permanent solutions, murder for hire.

 Essentially, though he’s careful never to leave fingerprints. His clients do the actual killing or at least the planning. He provides expertise, logistics, sometimes alibis. He takes a percentage of the payout, usually between 30 and 40%, and disappears before anyone starts asking questions. How many confirmed? Three suspected at least six more, including your father. We’re still investigating.

Some of these cases go back 15 years to when Holloway was first getting started. He’s evolved, gotten smarter, harder to catch, but you caught him now because he got sloppy. Agent Torres almost smiled. He kept that watch. A $40,000 Rolex was too tempting. And your brother was too observant.

 And you were too stubborn to just accept what you were seeing and go along with the plan. I thought about that moment in the dining room. The fraction of a second when I’d recognized the watch and everything had crystallized into terrible clarity. if I’d been slower or less certain or more willing to rationalize what I was seeing.

 Your wife has agreed to cooperate fully in exchange for a reduced sentence. Agent Torres continued, “She’s providing testimony against Holloway, including details of how they met, how they planned your father’s murder, and how they intended to disappear with the insurance money. Her testimony is going to help us build cases against several other suspects in Holloway’s network.

 What kind of reduced sentence?” 25 to life instead of life without parole. She’ll be eligible for parole in her 70s. If she lives that long, I should have felt something. Satisfaction, maybe justice. Instead, I just felt empty, hollowed out, like the last seven years of my life had been scraped away with a dull blade, leaving nothing but scar tissue.

 What happens to the insurance money? That’s complicated. Technically, you’re still the beneficiary, and the payout was made before any fraud was discovered. But there will be civil proceedings. The insurance company will likely try to recover the funds. The other victim’s families may also have claims. It could take years to sort out.

 I didn’t care about the money. I’d never cared about the money. I just wanted my father back. I wanted to go back to a time when I trusted my wife. When I believed in my marriage, when the world made sense, but you can’t go back. You can only go forward carrying the wreckage with you. The trial lasted 11 days.

 I testified on day three, walking through my account of that evening for a packed courtroom. Caroline sat at the defense table in a navy blue suit, her hair pulled back, her expression carefully neutral. She didn’t look at me. Not once during my entire testimony. Not when I described recognizing my father’s watch.

 Not when I described her cold, casual confession. Not when I described Dererick’s hands around my throat, squeezing the life out of me while she watched. Derek Holloway testified on day six, trying to minimize his role, trying to paint himself as a reluctant participant who’d been manipulated by my wife.

 The prosecutor, assistant district attorney Rachel Kim, demolished him in cross-examination. Mr. Holloway, isn’t it true that you’ve been connected to at least six other suspicious deaths resulting in insurance payouts over the past 15 years? That’s those are allegations. Nothing was ever proven.

 Isn’t it true that you maintain a website on the dark web where you advertise your services as a consultant for people looking to profit from accidents? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Isn’t it true that Caroline Whitfield paid you $75,000 as a down payment for your services? With another $150,000 due after the insurance claim was successfully processed? He didn’t answer.

 He just stared at the table in front of him, his jaw tight, his eyes empty. The jury deliberated for 4 hours and 17 minutes. Guilty on all counts, both of them. Derek Holloway was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and a litany of fraud charges that added decades to his sentence, even if the murder conviction was somehow overturned.

 Caroline received her negotiated sentence, 25 years to life. The judge, in his remarks, called her a predator who wore the mask of a loving wife while systematically planning the murder of a man who welcomed her into his family. She still didn’t look at me, not even when the baiffs led her away in handcuffs.

 Eric found me afterward sitting on a bench outside the courthouse. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and red, and I was just sitting there, not thinking, not feeling, just existing in the empty space where my life used to be. “It’s over,” he said, sitting down next to me. “Is it the trial is the legal part?” He was quiet for a moment.

“The rest takes longer.” I nodded. I’ve been seeing a therapist twice a week, a patient woman named Dr. Amelia Washington, who specialized in trauma and grief. “She’d helped me understand that I was processing two separate losses simultaneously. the death of my father and the death of my marriage. Both real, both devastating, both going to take years to fully work through.

 I keep thinking about the last time I saw him. I said, “Dad, it was a Sunday. He made pancakes. Those terrible pancakes he always made. The ones that were somehow burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. And I complained. I actually complained about his pancakes. He knew you loved him.

” Did he? Because I spent the last year of his life married to the woman who was planning to kill him. And I never noticed. I never saw anything wrong. I brought her into his home, Eric. I gave her access to his life and she used that access to murder him. That’s not on you. That’s on her. It doesn’t feel that way. Eric didn’t argue.

 He just sat with me in the gathering darkness. Two brothers who’d lost their father twice. Once to the grave and once to the truth. 8 months later, I sold the house. I couldn’t live there anymore. Couldn’t walk through the dining room without seeing the candles. The good china. Derek’s smile as he threatened my life.

 Couldn’t sleep in the bedroom I’d shared with Caroline for 7 years without wondering how many nights she’d lain beside me planning my father’s death. I used the money what was left after the legal battles to buy a small cabin in the mountains about 2 hours outside the city, quiet, isolated, the kind of place where you could hear yourself think.

 The insurance company had eventually settled, allowing me to keep 60% of the payout in exchange for dropping any potential wrongful death claims against them. The other 40% went into a trust for the other victim’s families administered by a nonprofit that Eric helped set up. We called it the Harrison Whitfield Memorial Fund. My father’s name, my father’s legacy, something good rising from the ashes of something terrible.

 I still visit his grave every Sunday. The real one, not the empty casket they’d originally buried. After the exumation, after the autopsy, they’d allowed me to bury him again properly this time. With a new casket and a new headstone, and the certain knowledge of how he’d really died. I don’t bring flowers. He always said flowers were a waste of money, that they just died and made the cemetery look cluttered.

 Instead, I bring a thermos of coffee, black, no sugar, the way he liked it, and I sit on the grass beside his stone, and I talk to him, about the weather, about the mariners, about the book I’m reading, or the project I’m working on. Normal things, father-son things. Sometimes I tell him about the trial, about Derek and Caroline and the network of predators they’d built, about the other families who’d finally gotten answers, finally gotten justice, because his death had exposed the whole rotten system.

 You always said everything happens for a reason. I told him one Sunday, watching the clouds drift across a steel gray sky. I don’t know if I believe that. I don’t know if there’s any reason good enough for what happened to you, but I know this. They didn’t get away with it. They tried to profit from your death and they’re going to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

 I poured some coffee onto the grass beside his headstone. A silly ritual, but it made me feel connected to him somehow. And dad, I’m going to be okay. It’s going to take time, a lot of time, but I’m going to be okay. The wind picked up, rustling through the trees that line the cemetery. And for just a moment, I could almost hear his voice, that gruff, warm voice that had guided me through every challenge in my life.

 I know you are, son. I never doubted it for a