“Elena.”
I turned. My brother Marcus, only nineteen, looked lost in his borrowed suit.
“Give me a minute with him. Please.”
They drifted away, leaving me alone with the casket and the long shadows the chapel windows threw across the floor.
I touched the polished wood and remembered the question I had asked Harold a hundred times growing up.
“Grandpa, why did Mom and Dad go to the summer house that day?”
He had always looked away. Always.
“Please, sweetheart. Not today.”
“But why won’t you tell me?”
“Because some memories burn a man twice, Elena. Let me carry it.”
I had stopped asking when I was sixteen, because I loved him too much to make him cry again. Now I would never know, and somehow that felt right, like a promise kept.
“I hope you’re with them now,” I whispered to the casket. “I hope Dad finally got to thank you.”
The chapel had emptied without my noticing. The candles flickered against the stained glass, and the silence settled heavy as a coat across my shoulders.
Then I felt it. A presence. The unmistakable weight of eyes on the back of my neck.
I lifted my head slowly and looked toward the rear of the chapel. A woman in a dark coat and headscarf stood very still beside the last pew, watching me.
And then, without hurry, she began walking toward the casket.
The watching presence didn’t stay hidden for long. She came forward slowly, an old woman in a heavy coat and a faded headscarf, threading through the empty pews as if she had been waiting for the chapel to clear.
I straightened beside Harold’s casket, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you know my grandfather?”
She didn’t answer. She only reached for my hand and pressed something into my palm, folding my fingers around it.
“If you want to know what really happened to your parents, read this,” she whispered. “Read it alone. Don’t tell the others. Not yet.”
My throat closed.
“Wait. Who are you?”
She squeezed my wrist once, looked at the casket, and turned away. By the time I found my voice again, she was already moving down the side aisle.
“Please, just tell me your name,” I called after her.
The chapel door swung shut behind her. I ran out into the parking lot, but the gravel paths were empty. A gray sedan was already pulling onto the road, too far away to read the plate.
I stood there shaking, the folded paper damp in my fist.
