Silence followed, stretching out longer than I expected, heavy enough that it almost felt like it had weight.
He still looked at me with clear distrust, his eyes sharp and unyielding, and honestly, that wasn't surprising in the slightest. It made perfect sense. People like them did not just change their minds because of a few words, no matter how sincere those words were meant to be. Words were cheap, especially in a place like this. Anyone could say something nice when it suited them.
They had spent far too long dealing with my father. A man who used them when it was convenient, threw them away the moment they stopped being useful, and never once bothered to look back at what he left behind. To him, they were tools at best, and garbage at worst.
That kind of damage stayed.
It lingered in the way they stood, in the way they looked at me, in the way their silence carried more meaning than anything they could have said out loud.
