That in itself wasn’t unusual. My father, Graham Holt, had spent most of his life working at heights that would make other people nervous. Ladders, rooftops, scaffolding—it didn’t matter. He moved across them with the kind of ease that only comes from decades of repetition, a confidence that made it easy to forget how dangerous those spaces really were. Even as he got older, even as his hair turned gray and his movements slowed just a little, he never quite gave up that habit of handling things himself.
He was shifting a line of loose shingles, crouched near the edge, balancing with one hand braced against the roof. I remember thinking, briefly, that I should tell him to come down, that we could fix it together later, that there was no rush.
I never got the chance.
One second he was there, steady and familiar, and the next something gave way—maybe a rotten board beneath his foot, maybe a misstep, maybe just bad luck—and his body tipped forward in a way that didn’t look real at first, like something my brain refused to process.
“Dad!” I shouted, but the word came too late, already trailing behind the moment it was meant to stop.
He fell fast.
Faster than I could move, faster than I could think.
