And my grandpa.
They never came back out.
When I was sixteen, our house caught fire in the middle of the night.
One moment I was asleep, wrapped in the ordinary comfort of being a kid who believed tomorrow was guaranteed. The next, I was coughing, half-blind from smoke, my dad shaking me awake and dragging me toward the front door.
I remember the heat. The noise. The way everything felt unreal, like I was watching my life from the outside.
