The papers lay sprawled across the table like an autopsy. Julia’s eyes moved line by line, every word slicing deeper. The ink was smudged where her fingers had lingered too long, tracing the signatures she wished she could unsee. There it was—Mr. Hughes’s sharp, practiced stroke beside her father’s death report. The date. The approval stamp. The authorization that turned neglect into murder.
Her breath hitched. Logic screamed that Brandon had nothing to do with it, that he’d been a boy when it happened. But blood had a way of staining generations. The Hughes name bled through every page. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, but it did nothing to stop the ache.
Her tears fell quietly, darkening the margins. She wanted to scream, to rip every sheet apart, to burn the evidence and the
