A weight—not just physical, but something else. The moment my fingers closed around it, something shifted inside me. Memories surfaced that didn't feel like memories at all—fragments, sensations, impressions that belonged to no one but pressed against my mind as though they were mine.
My chest tightened. My head buzzed, as though something long dormant had stirred.
I couldn't tell whether I was remembering something real or finally giving shape to what I had always feared.
I looked at my mother, and she looked back at me without speaking. We both understood, in that silence, that whatever this object was, it was not simply something my father owned.
It was something he served.
