Chapter 37

DAMIEN

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That same day, my father had returned home, as if some instinct had warned him what was happening.

He walked into the house, his face etched with a weary resignation, and then he saw a letter lying on their bed.

I hadn’t touched it.

I had gone into their room earlier, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach, to see if she had packed her things. And yes, everything was gone.

She was gone.

Leila was gone

She left without even looking back at us.

He was a shadow of himself for a long time after that, a ghost haunting the halls of our once happy home.

He was always complaining, his words laced with bitterness, and he stopped looking after us, lost in his own grief. He loved her more than he loved us, more than he had even loved my birth mother, who had died years earlier, two years after giving birth to Gerald.

I watched him drink himself into a stupor night after night, embarrassing us at every turn, racking up more and more debt.

Then, he fell ill, his body finally succum