Oh, like my whole chest didn’t just pull tight.
Oh, like I’m not suddenly fourteen again, standing at the bottom of the steps while Gabriel tells me no in that calm voice that always meant don’t ask again.
I hesitate.
“I’m not—”
Allowed.
The rest catches in my throat.
Maksim’s face hardens, not at me. At the ghost of something else. Someone else.
“You don’t have to worry about him,” he says. “He’s not part of your life anymore.”
The words hit low and deep.Not part of your life anymore.
Like it’s that simple. Like freedom can be spoken into being with one brutal sentence.
And maybe, from him, it can.
He glances toward the graves, then back at me. “You can come here whenever you want. Every day, if that’s what you need. I’ll bring you.”
Something hot presses behind my eyes so suddenly I have to look away. He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t crowd me. He just starts walking, slow enough that I can follow if I want to. So I do.
The path curves under the trees, gravel crunching softly beneath our shoes. The air smells like cut grass and warm stone and something green and old. My pulse gets louder with every step.
Then he stops.
For a second, I can’t move.
The headstone is simple. Elegant. Pale gray, worn slightly at the edges by time.
Evelyn Smith
Beloved Mother
The dates beneath her name blur before I can take them in. My breath leaves me in a rush.
There are flowers on either side.
A vase of dandelions, bright and wild and a little uneven, like someone had to search to find enough of them.
And on the other side, a bouquet so lush and expensive it looks almost out of place here. Cream roses. White peonies. Something soft and spilling over in expensive green.
I look up at him.
He squints against the daylight, gaze shifting away almost immediately like he already knows I’m about to make this worse for him by noticing he cared.
“She needed proper flowers,” he mutters. “I know you like the weeds, but your mother needed something decent.”
My throat aches.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He gives one short nod like that’s enough of that.
I step closer to the grave, staring at her name again, at the proof of her, the stone making her real in a way memory never quite could. My mother. Not a story. Not a shadow. Not something Gabriel could lock away just because it hurt him to let me have it.
