“I was sixteen the last time I set foot in this cabin.” The door shut behind me with a soft thud of finality, and I turned and faced the stranger who, apparently, knew me better than my own brother. After the things he’d told me about the elusive years my psyche refused to acknowledge, I was beginning to think he just might.

“As far as your memory goes, yeah, but before the shooting, you were living here.”

“Right,” I said with a sigh, dragging a hand through my unruly hair. A sling trapped my left arm, rendering it useless. I wandered into the living room, cursing the huge gaping hole in my life, and studied my dad’s cabin with new perspective. In so many ways it appeared unchanged. Same sturdy furniture, crafted by my grandfather’s hands and worn from many summers of use.

Standing in this place was akin to setting one foot in the present while the other planted firmly in the past. So much remained as I remembered, yet the subtle changes—the uncluttered space, free of Dad’s disorganized, spread-out existence—made my head swim with the evidence of what Jax had told me.

I’d been in prison.

My dad died while I was in there.

And I had no chance at ever fighting again—not in the way I’d dreamed of since I was old enough to throw a punch. Irritatingly, both Jax and Adam remained tight-lipped about why I’d been locked up, but Adam had made that last point abundantly clear; I’d left the world of fighting and had joined him in the family business. I was still trying to wrap my head around that piece of information.

“After your dad passed,” Jax said, halting beside me, “you offered me a place to stay. I’ve been doing the upkeep since.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Things look…different but the same. It’s strange.” I swerved my head toward him and he shrugged.

I moved toward the kitchen and sensed him following my slow steps. The room where Dad, Adam, and I had shared dirty jokes as we ate the day’s catch appeared the same too, though impeccably clean compared to what I remembered. The disorderly array of tackle boxes, fishing poles, and Dad’s overflowing ashtrays and beer bottles were absent. So was the musky scent of smoke. The paddle hanging by the back door was the only notable evidence of him.

An eerie chill drifted over my skin, almost as if someone had opened the door to the dead cold of winter, though the weather was mild for early June. I studied the kitchen table, drawn to it like a magnet, and the feeling I should recall something hit me with such significance, I froze, my feet stuck in place.