I found out my father had died through a terse legal email from a firm I didn't recognize.

No condolences, just the subject line that read,

notice of deceased estate transfer, urgent response required.

Attached were two PDFs, one listing my name as contact details and next of kin, and another

outlining the property I was set to inherit.

A single address in rural Kentucky, a parcel of land just shy of 60 acres, and a two-story house that had been last appraised in the early 2000s.

Beneath that was a line I re-read three times before I fully registered.

Workshop restricted access. Outbuilding number one.

Contents presumed hazardous. Consult County Code 43B.

I hadn't spoken to my father in nearly 20 years.

We hadn't fought exactly.

Just drifted, gradually and inevitably, until the silence between us became the only thing

either of us seemed willing to maintain. Even when my mother died, he hadn't called. The

funeral passed without a word from him, and I'd learned long ago not to expect anything more.

He had his work, and whatever that work became over time, it had consumed him.

The drive into the hills brought it all back.

That thick, dark stretch of Kentucky forest, the way the road narrowed, the further you got

from anything with a proper zip code.

The GPS cut out an hour before I reached the property line.

By then, the trees had thickened into walls on either side of the gravel road, and the

shadows between them were so dense, it looked more

like dusk than early afternoon.

...