Taller than most, broad, his back muscles straining beneath his sweat-stained shirt. He’d been a force of nature. A pillar of rock hewn out of a mountain. Immoveable. Indestructible. It was only recently that I’d begun to understand that he was in love with my mother. After she was killed, little by little, piece by piece, I’d watched him wither away, becoming less of himself. Becoming a shadow. The man that stood before me now was barely recognizable.
