The whole place looked like a magazine spread: expensive and cold and nothing like the warm house where I grew up.

He led me to the kitchen, which still had the same layout but with granite counters and stainless steel appliances where our old yellow refrigerator used to hum. This was where Dad made dinosaur pancakes every Saturday. Where Mom taught me to tie my shoes. Where our family fell apart.

«Coffee?» Clifton asked, already pulling out two mugs like he knew I’d say yes.

«Answers,» I said, sitting at a table that probably cost more than my truck.

He poured the coffee anyway, his hands shaking slightly. «I don’t even know where to start. How much did Dennis tell you about me?»

«Nothing, absolutely nothing. You were dead, that’s all I ever knew. And your mother, what did he say about why she left?»

«Just that she was gone and wasn’t coming back. I was eight, that’s all he’d tell me.»

Clifton sat down heavily across from me. «Your father and I were inseparable growing up. Irish twins, people called us, even though we were identical. Did everything together. Went to the same trade school, him for locksmithing, me for accounting. Best man at each other’s weddings.»

«Our wives were sisters, did you know that?»

«What?» My coffee mug stopped halfway to my mouth.

«Pauline and Patricia Morrison, your mom and my wife. They were sisters two years apart, we met them at the same party, married them a year apart, bought houses next door to each other. It was perfect, the four of us and our boys.»

«Boys? I have a cousin?»

His face crumpled. «Had. My son Nathan, three months older than you. You two were inseparable, just like Dennis and me. Did everything together until he got sick.»

I don’t remember any cousin named Nathan.

«You were seven when he died, leukemia, fought for a year, but we lost him right before his eighth birthday. That’s when everything started falling apart.»

«Why would dad lie about that? Why would he tell me you were dead?»

Clifton stood up, walked to the window that overlooked the backyard where I used to play. «Because of what I did after Nathan died. Because of how I betrayed him. Because he saved my life, and the price was that I had to stay dead.»

He turned back to me, and the pain on his face was so familiar it hurt. It was the same expression dad had whenever I asked about mom or why we left this house.

«Your father was the best man I ever knew, Reuben, and I destroyed everything he loved trying to save myself from grief.»

Clifton walked to a cabinet and pulled out a manila folder, his hands trembling as he set it on the table between us. Inside were newspaper clippings, yellowed with age. The headline on top read, «Detroit Credit Union Robbery, Attempt Foiled, Suspect Still At Large.»

«After Nathan died, I lost my mind,» he said, his voice flat and mechanical, like he’d rehearsed this confession a thousand times. «Patricia tried to help me, but I pushed her away. Started drinking heavily, gambling whatever money we had left after the medical bills.»

«Lost my job at the bank where I’d worked for ten years. Lost our house, lost everything. Patricia took what little we had left and went to live with her sister in Oregon.»

«Her sister? My mother?»

«No, their older sister, Rachel. Your mother stayed here trying to hold your family together while watching mine disintegrate. Dennis tried to help me, gave me money, found me jobs, let me sleep on your couch when I had nowhere else to go.»

«But I was drowning in grief and rage, and I couldn’t see anything except the unfairness of it all. Why did my boy die while yours got to live? Why was Dennis’s family whole while mine was shattered?»

He pulled out a photo from the folder. Two boys in baseball uniforms, arms around each other’s shoulders, gap-toothed grins identical in their joy.

«That’s you and Nathan, two weeks before he got sick.»

I stared at the photo, and suddenly, a memory surfaced. A boy who shared his candy, a boy who helped me build a fort in the backyard, a boy who disappeared, and then everyone was sad, and then we moved away.

«Your father had just gotten a contract to install new locks at the Detroit credit union,» Clifton continued. «Biggest job he’d ever landed. He had all the keys, all the codes, everything. The old system and the new system. For one week, he basically had complete access to the bank.»

My stomach turned. No, he wouldn’t. He didn’t.

«But I knew about the job, knew about the access. I was desperate, broken, convinced that money would fix everything. I could get Patricia back, start over, maybe even have another child.»

«I begged Dennis to help me. ‘Just open the doors,’ I said, ‘I’ll do the rest. We’ll split it, no one gets hurt.'»

«What did he say?»

«He threw me out of your house, told me I was dishonoring Nathan’s memory, that his son deserved better than a thief for a father. He was right, but I was too far gone to see it.»

Clifton sat back down, looking older with each word. «So I stole his work keys while he was sleeping, made copies at a 24-hour hardware store, returned them before he woke up. Planned everything for the following Friday night.»

«You robbed the bank?»

«No, I went there, stood at the door at 2 AM with the keys in my hand. I put the key in the lock, started to turn it, and then I saw my reflection in the glass. Saw what I’d become, this twisted, broken thing that Nathan wouldn’t recognize.»

«I stood there crying, thinking about my son, about Dennis, about everything I was about to destroy, and I couldn’t do it. I left, went to a bar instead, and drank until they threw me out.»

«Then, why the newspaper?»

«Because someone else robbed that bank the same night, three hours after I left. Used the same entry points I’d planned to use. The security footage was conveniently corrupted, but the police found my fingerprints on the door handle.»

«The bartender remembered me, but couldn’t pin down exact times. I was drunk, desperate, with motive and means, and my prints at the scene.»

«They arrested you?»

«They came to arrest me. Dennis got there first. Told me to pack whatever I could carry. Gave me $5,000, all the cash he had saved.»

«Told me to run, start over, never contact anyone again. Said Clifton Thorn died in a car accident out west, and whoever I became next better be worthy of the second chance.»

«But what about the police?»

«Dennis gave me an alibi. Told them I’d been with him all night, helping with inventory at his shop. His word carried weight. He’d never had so much as a parking ticket.»

«They investigated him for months, but Dennis never cracked. Never changed his story, even when they threatened to charge him as an accessory.»

«Who really robbed the bank?»

«They never caught them. The investigation went cold after six months, but Dennis paid for my freedom. His reputation was damaged. Clients stopped trusting him.»

«Your mother couldn’t handle the shame, the whispers, the police showing up at all hours. She left eight months after I disappeared. She left because of you.»

«She left because of what I’d done to your father, to our family, to everything we’d built. And Dennis let her go because he knew she deserved better than the mess I’d created.»

«He sold the house to pay for the lawyer he needed to keep the police away. Moved you to that apartment. Started over with just the two of you.»

Clifton stood up and walked to a safe hidden behind a painting on the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before, but then again, nothing in this house was what it seemed anymore. He spun the combination and pulled out stack after stack of cash, placing them on the table until they formed a small mountain between us.