"The dead don't whisper. But they leave behind echoes. This is one of them."
David: Journal Entry #1
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I didn't cry at the funeral.
People noticed. I saw it in their stares — the way they tried not to meet my eyes too long, as if they were searching for grief that refused to show. But they didn't know what I knew. They didn't know what had been left in a brown leather journal buried under a pile of unread case files, or what a single letter could do to a man to learn he is now an orphan, twice. And truthfully, David had prepared me for his death especially after the first suicide attempt. Me saving him then had only helped unravel a few secrets.
I didn't cry because I couldn't feel the loss fully — not yet.
How do you mourn someone whose truth you're only starting to discover?
Jonathan was my father. The man who raised me. The one who packed my lunch and taught me how to tie a tie, who took me to every school debate, who never missed a prize-giving day. The man who — in his final letter — told me he had one last act of love to give: "Go to David. He is yours by blood. And you are his only salvation."
Then he left. I had gone to David and now alos David had left. David had said he's going to join Joe.
And suddenly, I was alone.
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Excerpt from David's Journal (Age 18)
"I think I became invisible long before anyone noticed I was there. I don't know if silence made me, or if I made it. But either way, it fits like skin now."
"Today I leave for university abroad. Joe says it's a fresh start. But the grave he showed me last week — the one with her name on it — that was the real goodbye. Makanaka. I wish I could say her name out loud, just once, without it clawing through my throat like a prayer that never got answered."
"She's gone. That chapter is closed. No chance for me to apologise. No note. No goodbye. Just a cold slab of stone with her name etched like a curse. If there was anything left of us… it died with her."
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I read those words sitting on the edge of David's old desk, in the study no one had dared clean out yet. The room still smelled like ink and stale coffee, and the blinds let in just enough light to see the dust hanging like ghosts.
There was no mention of me.
Not yet.
Just the weight of his grief. His guilt. And silence so loud it practically screamed.
Jonathan never told David the truth.
Joe — the man I once thought of as a father — had searched for Makanaka after she vanished, only to find her grave and a whisper of a child born in secret. But he kept that knowledge buried. Maybe out of fear. Maybe out of guilt.
But guilt has a voice.
And mine was finally starting to speak.
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I stayed up all night reading.
The pages were uneven. Some smudged by time, others by tears I didn't yet have the right to shed. The journal wasn't in order — as if David had written his thoughts like someone who never expected to be read. Or maybe he had hoped I would, someday. Maybe that was the point.
But I didn't find my story. Not yet.
What I found was his unraveling.
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Excerpt — David's Journal (Age 22)
"There's something no one ever tells you about leaving your country to find your future. Sometimes, your future was buried in the past you left behind."
"I don't sleep much anymore. Maybe it's the law degree. Maybe it's the dreams. Or maybe it's just the silence of a place where no one knows your name and no one's asking who you used to be."
"Joe wrote to say things are fine. He never says much. But I can read between his silences. He found her. Or what was left of her. I asked if he found anything else. He said 'no'. Just a grave. Nothing more."
"I want to believe him. But I can still hear her voice sometimes. In the dark. Just before sleep grabs me. She used to hum when she was nervous. I hum now too. That's how I know I'm not okay."
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I paused there.
Joe lied.
He told David the grave was all there was. But Joe knew. He'd found the paperwork. He'd found me and kept me as his own.
And he never said a word.
I don't know what's worse — that David never knew I existed, or that the man who should've told him decided he'd rather bury the truth than break the man who had already buried too much.
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I should've shouted. I should've broken something. But I didn't. For the first time, I had known my Mom's name.
Because something deeper than anger lived in me now — a hunger to know who David was, beyond the title. Beyond the myth.
So I read on.
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Excerpt — David's Journal (Age 27)
"Jonathan called today. He says there's a boy who debates like he's got fire in his lungs. He laughs like someone I used to know. And for a moment, I wondered — just for a moment — what it would've been like to have a son."
"That thought scared me. More than anything. Because what if I already did?"
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He felt me. Even when no one told him.
And I had spent 17 years calling him "Uncle David" and wondering why he never looked at me quite like the others.
Because deep down, maybe he had known.
Maybe blood doesn't always need a name to recognize itself.