Have You Ever

  Part 2 The last time Anna saw her father, he was framed in a car window, waving in that distracted way people do when they're already halfway gone. Twenty-five years of marriage, two children, and a transcontinental marriage had unravelled in a text message that blinked across continents. “I’ve met someone. I’m not coming back.” No maintenance. No phone calls. Just radio static and foreign postage. Anna and her brother Luka had grown up in the echo of that silence. Now, in her thirties, Anna was a family lawyer, known for her scalpel-sharp precision in court—and the fire in her voice when defending abandoned parents. Luka had walked a different line: a painter whose chaotic canvases spoke of fractured homes, of limbs stretching across oceans. Then came the email. A forwarded invitation. Their father—John—was being honoured at a corporate gala in Cape Town for “decades of international development and leadership.” Luka sent no message. Just a plane ticket confirmation and a link ...