A few months after I started returning their checks, my father drove out to Queens to surprise me as I was returning home from work. I’ve always thought of my father as being handsome compared with my friends’ fathers—women used to turn to look at him on the street—but for the first time, I noticed how old he looked. He had bags under his eyes and a paunch straining the buttons on his shirt. His hair had always looked silver, but now it just looked dull gray.

Don’t do this, Brooke, he pleaded with me. Your mother and I love you. You know that.

I had snorted. If you loved me, you wouldn’t be ashamed of me.

We’re not ashamed of you. We just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come to Raker.

But why?

The crease that was always between my father’s eyebrows these days grew deeper. Can’t you just trust us for once, Brooke? We’re doing this for your own good.

I was utterly unsurprised that my father would not give me a logical reason why I couldn’t ever visit my childhood home with my son. So I turned him away, and I continued returning their checks, uncashed. After a year, they got the idea and the checks stopped arriving.

Now here I am, a few short months after their deaths, back in my hometown. Despite how terribly things went wrong, I had a happy childhood until that night. This is the kind of town where you want your child to grow up.

But I can’t help feeling like this bedroom is haunted by their presence. Or really, the entire house.

I climb out of bed and walk over to the dresser across the room. When I arrived here after I got news of the car accident, I found this dresser littered with photographs of me and Josh. The photographs stopped after I cut them off five years ago, but there were dozens of pictures all over the house, spanning my life from when I was first born to that day I sent my father away because they couldn’t accept my life choices. I took most of them down, but I left a couple. For example, a photograph on the dresser from when I was about Josh’s age, posing with my parents for a Christmas card.

I pick up the photograph now, staring down at my smiling, unlined face. My parents each have one hand on my shoulder, and they are glowing with pride in our little family. I can’t even remember them ever looking that way.