For twenty long years, my family had told me that my father perished in a catastrophic house fire in our old neighborhood.

The firefighters never recovered a body, but the structure had been reduced to ash, and everyone assumed no one could have survived.

I was only ten years old.

After the fire, I was taken in and raised by an aunt.

At twenty-one, I met Julian, but I never stopped wondering what had truly happened on that awful night.

Now, my father was sitting in my bathtub.