Julian sat at the table in the living room with his phone in one hand and the folder his sister had left in the other.
He had opened the folder the moment he walked in. No hesitation this time. The pages were old, edges slightly worn, the kind of documents kept in storage for years.
He flipped through them slowly, scanning dates, signatures, addresses. The first few forms looked ordinary enough, childhood check-ups, school records, a single page from a summer camp medical sheet. Nothing stood out until he reached the fourth page.
It was a consent form for a school trip. The date at the top read 2009. The signature at the bottom was his mother's.
But the line below it, the one that listed the emergency contact, had his father's name and number written in clear, steady handwriting.
Julian stared at the number.
He knew that number. He had dialed it himself more than once as a teenager.
