After my brother’s death, Michael, my father, became the very villain my fairytale stories warned me about. A heart that was once large enough to harbor all the love in the world shriveled into a gray husk overnight. He doesn’t check in on me. He doesn’t talk to me. He acts like nothing ever happened. It’s like he wants to erase that entire part of his life, which includes me, too. He let the pain consume him, and he used it to estrange himself from me. Instead of our family being united by grief—supporting one another to strengthen our foundation—we were ripped apart by death’s merciless
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