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Jordan

Ever since I enty-three years old, there had been a fire burned into my memory

I wished it was a metaphorical fire, one that drove me to excel and succeed and filled me up from the inside I’d even settle for a bonfire that was athered around on an evening when everything felt right in the world But for ly s sky as it devoured a corner office in an old whiskey distillery on the edge of town

A corner office, and nothing else

A corner office I didn’t know held my father inside it

I’d been the only one of my family to see the actual fire, to watch the smoke billow and as left of the flah the busted s of that office I hadn’t thought twice about it, other than to think it was a s into town I was on my way to Mom and Dad’s for dinner

It was such a small fire, already in control when I drove past it The fire depart fro I didn’t know er of spreading, that it was ta if Dad would be called back up to the distillery to fill out paperwork, since he was on the board

When I had opened the screen door from Mom and Dad’s front porch, all three of a over each other at a volume that was always too loud for my taste

None of them looked like ht in the winterthe summer Compared to their olive tan, it stood out, a reed My onyx hair that curled tightly to ht locks

But, the fact that the blood that ran through h theirs didn’t matter My adoption didn’t matter It never had

We were brothers, an iood