My Lost Family

The heavy iron gate groaned shut, a sound I knew too well after five years inside.

I stood there, a single duffel bag holding all that was left of my old life, traded my prison gray for ill-fitting civilian clothes.

Then a sleek black car pulled up, and Maestro Chen, the man who saw something in my prison-yard music, told me we were going home-my old home.

But "home" had already moved on, without me.

Liam Carter, a man with my face, had stolen everything: my fiancée Olivia, my family' s love, even my dog Apollo.

My family-my parents, Robert and Sarah, and my sister Emily-they didn' t just embrace him, they erased me, the painful reminder of a tragedy they preferred to forget.