I was seven years old when my parents passed. Along with my twin brother, Carltyn.
That sentence never sounds real no matter how many times I repeat it in my head.
It always feels like something I read in a file about someone else, not something that happened to me. I barely remembered how it happened, and even less how the truth came to me—only that I was the one who survived.
And that alone never made sense.
Every time I looked up information about the incident, nothing added up. I tried when I was older, tried again when I learned how to dig deeper than what people were willing to tell me. But every article, every report, every record felt… off. Like pieces were missing. Like someone had smoothed the edges of the story until it looked simple enough to swallow.
It was all over the news that day.
Apparently, the car had flown off a bridge because the road was too slippery. A tragic accident. A rainy day. Wrong place, wrong time. That's what they said.
Rainy day.
That detail followed me my entire life.
I remember rain, but not the crash. I remember the sound of it hitting the windows, steady and loud, like it was trying to drown out something else. I remember my mother telling Carltyn and me to buckle up—her voice calm, too calm. I remember my father's hands on the steering wheel, tight enough that his knuckles looked pale even in the dim light.
And then nothing.
No screeching tires.
No screaming.
No impact.
Just darkness.
They said the car lost control. They said the bridge didn't have enough traction when it rained. They said the water below was unforgiving. They said my parents died on impact, and my brother with them.
They said I was lucky.
I hate that word.
Lucky doesn't explain why I was the only one pulled from the wreck. Lucky doesn't explain why my injuries didn't match the damage they described. Lucky doesn't explain why witness statements contradicted each other, or why some reports were sealed, or why timelines shifted depending on which article you read.
Lucky doesn't explain why my father's name stopped appearing in follow-up stories.
My father wasn't careless. He checked tires before long trips. He hated driving in the rain. He would've turned around if it was truly dangerous. And he would never have driven fast enough for a car to "fly" off a bridge—especially not with his entire family inside.
When I was younger, adults told me not to ask questions.
When I was older, they told me to let it go.
When I was finally old enough to understand what that meant, I realized they were afraid of what I might find.
Sometimes I wonder if the rain was just convenient.
A reason no one would question.
An excuse heavy enough to bury the truth beneath it.
Because accidents don't leave this many loose ends.
And fathers don't disappear from records unless someone wants them gone.
I don't remember the moment I lost my family.
But I remember living with the feeling that it wasn't supposed to end that way.
And somehow… I've always known that my father's death wasn't just an accident.
It didn't even feel like they were gone.
That was the strangest part of all. There was no clear ending, no moment where my heart understood what everyone else seemed to accept so easily. It just felt as though they had gone on a very long vacation—one they forgot to tell me the return date for.
Adults cried around me. Strangers spoke in hushed voices. People wore black and touched my shoulder like I was fragile glass. But inside me, nothing lined up with what I was supposed to feel. I kept waiting for them to come back. Waiting for my mother's voice to call my name. Waiting for my father to walk through a door that never opened. Waiting for Carltyn to appear beside me like he always did, the way twins just exist together without explanation.
I didn't feel empty.
I felt paused.
There was this itchy feeling in my heart—deep and uncomfortable, like something that wouldn't settle no matter how much time passed. It wasn't pain, not at first. It was belief. A quiet, stubborn belief that refused to leave me alone. The kind that whispered late at night when the house was too quiet and the rain tapped against the windows.
They might still be alive.
That thought stayed with me longer than it should have. Longer than people thought was healthy. But it wasn't denial—it was instinct. Children know things before they have the language to explain them. And something in me knew that goodbye had never really been said.
I used to imagine them stuck somewhere. Delayed. Lost. Trying to come back. I imagined my father telling my mother it would be okay, that they just needed time. I imagined Carltyn getting impatient, asking how much longer, because he always hated waiting.
No one ever corrected me directly. They just redirected the conversation. Changed the subject. Smiled sadly and said things like they're in a better place now—as if that explained why my heart kept reaching for people who supposedly no longer existed.
Years passed, but the feeling didn't fade.
It changed.
It turned into questions. Into restless nights. Into a need to understand why death felt so unfinished. Why grief never arrived the way it was supposed to. Why closure was something everyone talked about but no one ever gave me.
Because you can't mourn what doesn't feel gone.
And you can't stop searching for people when every part of you believes they're still out there—somewhere beyond the rain, beyond the bridge, beyond the story they told the world.
Still waiting.