And I preferred it that way. I didn’t need the world to cheer. I just wanted it to stop whispering.
The day after the case was dismissed, I unplugged my landline. I deleted my social media accounts. Not that I had posted in years, but the messages were starting to come—requests for interviews, “truth-seeking” documentaries, estranged cousins suddenly remembering we were related.
I didn’t answer. I let the voicemail pile up like dead leaves I had no intention of raking.
My parents never called. Not to explain. Not to apologize.
But I did receive something two weeks later.
A letter on thick, cream-colored stationery. My father’s handwriting, formal and heavy. No greeting. Just four sentences about “regretful confusion” and how “familial dynamics are often complex.”
He signed it Dr. Charles E. Kincaid, as if we had only ever been colleagues on some distant academic paper.
I burned it in the kitchen sink without reading the last line.
I watched the paper curl into black ash, feeling the heat on my face. It was done. But as the last ember died out, I realized I couldn’t stay in Savannah. The city was haunted by people who knew a version of me that didn’t exist. I packed my duffel bag—the same one I carried home from the war—and looked at a map of North Carolina. I needed mountains. I needed trees that were older than my pain.
I moved three months later.
