PART 2
I followed the cemetery groundskeeper through the rain, my shoes sinking into the wet grass with every step.
The whole time, I kept looking back at Lily’s grave.
Something inside me was screaming not to go.
Because when a stranger tells a grieving mother she does not know the whole truth about her dead daughter, part of you wants answers…
And the other part is terrified those answers will destroy whatever pieces of you are still standing.
The groundskeeper stopped beside a small maintenance shed near the back of the cemetery. Rain dripped from the brim of his cap, and his hands shook as he pulled a folded cloth from his jacket pocket.
“My name is Otis,” he said quietly. “I’ve worked here fourteen years. I mind my business. I don’t get involved with families.”
“Then why are you involved with mine?” I asked.
He looked past me toward the road.
“Because another woman has been visiting your daughter’s grave.”
My breath caught.
“What woman?”
“Tall. Blonde. Drives a dark SUV. She comes early on Thursdays.”
“No,” I said immediately. “No one else visits Lily.”
Otis swallowed.
“She does.”
My fingers curled into my palms.
“What does she bring?”
His eyes softened.
“Yellow daisies.”
The rain seemed to go silent around me.
Lily hated roses.
But she loved daisies.
She used to say they looked like little pieces of sunshine trying to survive bad weather.
“What does she say?” I whispered.
Otis hesitated.
“Mostly… she apologizes.”
A cold feeling spread through my chest.
“Why would a stranger apologize to my daughter?”
“I don’t know all of it,” he said. “But I know guilt when I see it.”
I stared at him, unable to move.
“The police told me what happened,” I said. “A storm. A bridge. No survivors.”
Otis’s voice dropped.
“The police told you about the road, ma’am. Maybe not why she was on it.”
I walked back to Lily’s grave in a daze.
White roses lay against the stone, heavy with rain.
For the first time, they looked wrong.
Like I had been grieving the daughter everyone told me she was…
Instead of the daughter I should have listened to.
“When does she come?” I asked.
“Thursday,” Otis said. “Around eight in the morning.”
“Then I’ll be here.”
On Thursday morning, I parked outside the cemetery gates before sunrise.
My hands were wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that my knuckles hurt.
At 8:06, a dark SUV turned into the cemetery.
A woman stepped out carrying yellow daisies.
I got out before she reached Lily’s grave.
“Are those for my daughter?”
She froze.
The flowers trembled in her hands.
“Answer me.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Yes,” she whispered. “And for mine.”
I took one step closer.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Katherine.”
“That means nothing to me.”
Her voice broke.
“My daughter was Sadie.”
The name hit me like ice water.
Sadie.
The girl from the other car.
The girl everyone said had been racing Lily that night.
After the funeral, people whispered that the girls had been jealous of each other. That they were reckless. That teenage girls did stupid things in storms.
I had hated Sadie for a month without ever knowing her.
“Leave,” I said.
“Please, Rebecca.”
“You don’t get to say my name.”
“I know,” Katherine whispered. “But Sadie said your name before she died.”
Everything in me went still.
“What?”
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