afternoon was her laughter.
Not a goodbye.
Not a reminder to stay safe.
Not even a promise that someone would return for me.
Just laughter.
The kind that stays in your memory long after the people responsible have forgotten what they did.
I stood alone on Platform 7, watching the train disappear down the tracks while my family laughed behind its windows.
I was fourteen years old.
Small for my age, quiet, and accustomed to making myself invisible whenever my family was together.
My father frequently called me spineless.
Mom insisted I was overly sensitive.
And my older sister, Claire, enjoyed referring to me as the useless member of the family.
I wasn’t an adopted child.
I wasn’t a distant relative they had reluctantly agreed to raise.
I was their biological son.
Yet throughout my childhood, they treated me as though I were an inconvenience they had never quite figured
