Three weeks after our father’s funeral, my brother Callum emptied the entire house and called to tell me there was nothing worth keeping. “Honestly, Thea. Just junk. I had a man take it.” Four days later, our solicitor asked us both to remain after the reading of the will. Then she turned her computer screen toward us.
My name is Thea Rasmussen-Ofori. I’m forty-four, and my brother is forty-seven. Our father, Arthur, was seventy-nine when he died in his favorite chair, watching the horse racing. He had lived in the same house on Fernlow Road since buying it in 1981. I lived 210 miles away. Callum lived eleven minutes from the house and had held the spare key since 2016. When I arrived that Saturday, the house wasn’t simply untidy. It was completely empty. The furniture, photographs, tools, and even the clock Mum had bought in Whitby were gone. I could hear my footsteps echoing through the rooms.
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