Five months later I finally drove back through Dayton because one of my old teachers retired and invited me to the party at the high school.
I almost didn’t go.
The whole drive there I kept replaying what I said to my sister at graduation. I’d told myself for years she overreacted because people say ugly things sometimes. Families move on.
But when I pulled onto her street, her grass was waist high.
Mail stuffed in the box.
A county notice taped crooked on the front door.
I honestly thought maybe she’d moved.
Then the neighbor from across the street came outside slow like she already knew who I was.
First thing she said was, “You’re Trey?”
I said yes.
She just stared at me for a second and said, “Honey… where have you been?”
My stomach dropped immediately.
Turns out my sister lost her apartment three months after I graduated because she’d been helping pay for my tuition and never told me how bad things got afterward.
The neighbor said she worked doubles at a diner outside Dayton until she collapsed during a shift.
Brain aneurysm.
Dead before the ambulance got there.
I physically couldn’t process what I was hearing because nobody called me.
Not one person.
Then the neighbor looked uncomfortable and said my sister left something with her in case I ever came back.
It was a grocery-store envelope with my name written in marker.
Inside was a photo of us at my eighth grade football game and a folded receipt from my final tuition payment.
My sister had written on the back:
“Easy road was working nights so you could have a different one.”