The Dog Got My Grave Chapter 2

The next morning, I went back to the Bradford mansion to retrieve my birth certificate and legal records.

The hospice counselor had told me that even if I refused palliative admission, I needed my vital identity documents notarized to execute a final directive.

I stood on the stone porch of the house I was supposed to belong to and punched the code into the keypad. The lock chimed an error tone. I tried three times.

The heavy mahogany door opened from the inside. The butler stood there, shifting uncomfortably.

"Mrs. Bradford had the security codes updated earlier this week, sir. You... you didn't call ahead."

I managed a faint, bloodless smile.

To discard someone, they didn't even need a formal goodbye. They only needed to change a six-digit code.

"I just need to grab my paperwork from the study," I said.

The foyer was choked with the heavy, sweet scent of white lilies. Black-and-white portraits of Teddy lined the mantel, tracking the dog’s life from a clumsy pup to an aged golden retriever. Robert stood by the fireplace, carefully leveling a silver frame.

The framed portrait from my eighteenth birthday—the only family photo I had ever been invited to stand in—was gone.

Robert turned, his expression darkening instantly. "What are you doing here? Elliott is barely holding it together. Don't start another scene."

"I came for my birth certificate and identity file," I said evenly. "I'll be out of your way in five minutes."

His eyes raked over my frame, lingering on the hollows of my cheeks and the way my coat hung off my withered shoulders. For half a second, I thought he might see it. The gray undertone in my skin. The scent of sickness.

Instead, his lip curled. "Who are you putting on this performance for? Starving yourself to play the tragic martyr, all because of a plot of dirt? You're pathetic, Shane."

I didn't argue.

I walked past him and climbed the stairs.

The door to my old bedroom was wide open. The bed, the desk, the low bookshelf—all stripped away. The walls had been repainted in a warm, honey-toned beige. Elliott was on his knees by the window, carefully arranging Teddy's leather harness, chew ropes, and ceramic water bowl inside an illuminated glass display cabinet.

Seeing me, Elliott flinched, pulling a cardboard box against his ribs like a shield.

"Shane... I know this was your room," he stammered, his eyes welling up. "But Teddy loved lying in the sun right here by the glass. Dad said... Dad said if we turn this into his memorial room, it'll feel like he never left us."

My gaze drifted past him, landing on a black contractor trash bag slumped in the corner.

Peeking out from the plastic was the frayed ear of a stuffed cloth rabbit.

It was the birthday present Paul, the old director at the orphanage, had given me when I turned seven. The only thing I had carried in my hands when Robert brought me into this house.

I stepped forward and bent down to pull it out.

Robert’s hand clamped down hard on my wrist, shoving me back. "It's moldy junk. I told the housekeepers to throw it out. You moved into your own apartment months ago—stop using this house as a dumping ground."

He stepped between me and the bag. "You're the older brother, Shane. For once in your life, try showing some empathy for Elliott."

"Empathy."

When Elliott failed his college entrance exams, I had to show empathy by giving up my funded exchange spot in London so he could take a private semester abroad to mend his wounded pride.

When Elliott got engaged to his high-society sweetheart and didn't want his in-laws to realize he was merely the adopted child, I had to show empathy by staying away from the gala so he could play the sole heir of the Bradford name.

And now, my childhood bedroom had to be emptied to build a shrine for his dog.

Without warning, a hot, tearing spike ripped through the right side of my abdomen.

My breath hitched. The room tilted. I braced my forearm against the doorframe, but a violent, metallic taste surged up my throat.

I couldn't swallow it down.

Dark, slick blood splattered across the glass cabinet, spraying directly over the laminated cover of Teddy’s memorial photo album.

Elliott screamed, dropping to the floor. "Teddy's album!"

Robert's eyes flared with rage. Before I could catch my balance, his hand cracked across my face.

The slap threw me sideways into the wall. My ears rang with a deafening whine.

"Shane Bradford!" Robert roared, his chest heaving. "Is there no limit to your venom?!"

I stayed slumped against the baseboard, my hand pressed to my throbbing cheek, tasting bile and blood.

Robert looked down at the dark puddle on the hardwood floor. For a fraction of a second, his fingers twitched. "You..."

"Dad!" Elliott threw himself into Robert’s waist, sobbing hysterically. "That was the last photo I took with him at the lake! Does Shane want me to die too? Is that what he wants?!"

Robert instantly wrapped his arms around Elliott, shushing him, kissing his temple. The flicker of hesitation in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, hardened resolve.

Eleanor appeared in the doorway, drawn by the commotion. She looked at the ruined album, looked at Elliott sobbing, and then looked at me as if I were a stray rat that had crawled out of the sewer.

"Pack the rest of his things," she told the maid coldly. "Everything. If he believes this family has wronged him, he is never to set foot across this threshold again."

My clothes, a few worn paperback novels, and my high school honors certificates were shoved indiscriminately into two cardboard boxes.

Eleanor never asked why I had coughed up blood.

Robert never looked at me again.

I hauled the two damp boxes down the gravel driveway. It was beginning to drizzle. The butler stepped forward with an umbrella, but Eleanor’s sharp voice called him back from the porch.

As I reached the front gate, Robert jogged down the drive, catching up to me.

"Shane."

I stopped, my lungs burning under the weight of the boxes.

He looked at the rain soaking through the cardboard, his jaw tight.

"Make sure you mail the family registry document back," he said flatly. "That record belongs to the Bradford estate."

I nodded. "Okay."

Back in my studio, I sat at the laminate table and used an exacto knife to carefully slice out the single sheet that bore my name.

On the Bradford family registry, Elliott’s name sat proudly beneath Robert and Eleanor’s, listed as the first son. My name had been squeezed in years later, printed at the absolute bottom of the page like an administrative footnote.

I folded my slip of paper and slid it into my personal folder.

Then I placed the rest of the documents into a courier envelope, addressed it to the Bradford estate, and wrote a single line on the delivery note:

"Returned to its rightful owner. I will not disturb you again."