The heavy morning mist began to thin, revealing the cold, etched features of the headstone where James Hobbs’s portrait sat. The late Patriarch looked out at the world with a gentle, frozen smile—a kindness that felt increasingly alien in the presence of his surviving kin. To Allen Morgan, looking at that face brought back the vivid, searing memory of the day the old man had dragged him out of a literal house of fire, saving a life that the rest of the world had already written off.
Allen sat in the damp grass before the grave, his voice barely a rhythmic murmur beneath the sighing of the autumn wind. "Old man," he whispered, "I’ve often wondered if you regretted it. Dragging me out of those flames just to tie me to a family that has spent three years trying to snuff out what was left of
