Neither he nor his younger sister Amelia actually knew anything substantial about him at all.
They had grown up without his presence, navigating the harsh realities of life and the crushing weight of poverty without a father figure to guide or protect them.
To Amelia, he was nothing more than an abstract concept, a phantom parent who existed only in the quiet background of their mother's occasional sad glances.
They had been left entirely in the dark regarding who he truly was, what he did, or the real reasons behind why he had chosen to abandon his family so many years ago.
He was the older brother, but the only real memory he actually had of his father was a single, fleeting image of him looking down at him with a proud smile when he was still a very little boy.
It was a distant, isolated fragment from his early childhood that had managed to survive the passage of time, buried deep within the recesses of his mind.
