The phone call came on a Tuesday, ironically mirroring the day he had left. The voice on the other end was professional and completely detached. “I’m looking for the next of kin for Arthur Vance,” the voice said. “Your father passed away in his sleep on Sunday night.

As his only child, you are the sole beneficiary of his estate. We need you to come down and handle his affairs.” I didn’t cry. My heart didn’t skip a beat. If anything, I just felt a profound sense of inconvenience. I took a few days off work, packed a small overnight bag, and drove out to the house he had lived in for the past decade.

It was the house I had grown up in, the one he had inexplicably kept in the divorce settlement, though my mother had fiercely fought for it. Pulling up to the driveway, the house looked exactly the same, yet entirely foreign. The paint was peeling slightly around the window frames, and the lawn was meticulously kept but totally devoid of personality.

I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, fully expecting it to feel like I was sorting through a stranger’s useless things. The house was unnervingly quiet. It smelled like old coffee, dust, and lemon Polish. There were no photographs of the supposed “younger woman.” In fact, there were no photographs of anyone at all.

The walls were bare. The furniture was purely functional. It didn’t look like a home; it looked like a waiting room. I spent the first two days mindlessly bagging up clothes, sorting through utility bills, and organizing things for an estate sale. It was methodical, cold work.

I felt nothing but a dull desire to get it over with and go back to my real life. On the third day, I pulled down the creaky wooden stairs to the attic.

It was sweltering up there, the air thick with decades of stagnant heat and dust.

There were only a few boxes scattered around. I started opening them, finding old tax returns, broken Christmas ornaments, and rusted tools. Then, shoved deep into the darkest corner behind a broken standing fan, I found a small, unmarked cardboard box. It was taped shut with old, yellowing packing tape that flaked away easily under my fingernails.

I opened the flaps, and the air left my lungs. Sitting right on top of a stack of faded utility receipts was my old high school diary. It was a dark green, faux-leather notebook with a flimsy brass lock that I had broken open years ago.

I recognized it instantly. It was the exact diary I used to hide under my mattress from ages thirteen to sixteen. It was the book where I poured every single emotional, agonizing, venomous teenage thought into. It was where I documented my hatred for him, my sorrow for my mother, and my profound sense of abandonment. How did he have it?