CHAPTER TEN
I picked it up.
The file was thick. Heavy in a way that had nothing to do with its actual weight. My father's name on the cover in plain black letters like it was just another document in just another corridor.
Like it was ordinary.
Like my hands weren't shaking.
I opened it.
The first page was a photograph.
My father. Younger than I remembered him…or maybe just less tired. Standing somewhere I didn't recognise with a man I didn't know, both of them looking at something outside the frame.
My father was smiling…not the careful smile he wore when he was performing normalcy for my benefit. A real one. The kind I hadn't seen since I was small enough to believe everything was fine.
I turned the page.
Documents. Pages and pages of them. Numbers. Names. Dates going back furt
