This time, Andrew followed. Walking like a man twenty years older, he trudged toward the cemetery gates. His shoes sank into the mud, and his wool overcoat was heavy with rain, but he didn’t care. Nothing felt particularly important anymore.
Near the heavy iron gates, under the small overhang of a bus stop, he saw a hunched figure. An old woman in a dark coat sat with her weathered, calloused hands folded in her lap. She looked like one of those local fixtures who knew that grief often made people more generous.
Andrew stopped. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out his wallet, took several hundred dollars in large bills, and handed them to her without counting.
— “For Olivia,” he said, his voice raspy.
The woman looked up. Her eyes were striking—nearly translucent, with a yellowed tint to the whites. It was the gaze of someone who had seen too much. She took the money without looking at it, tucked it into her pocket, and stared at Andrew as if she were reading his fine print.
— “And what are you going to tell your daughter?” she croaked.
Andrew froze. His feet felt like they were rooted into the wet asphalt. His heart, which had been thumping a slow, heavy rhythm, suddenly skipped.
— “I’m sorry?” he asked, assuming the rain had muffled her words.
— “I’m asking about your daughter,” the woman repeated calmly. There was no malice in her voice, just a strange, weary sadness. — “What’s your explanation for her now?”
— “I don’t have a daughter,” Andrew said, enunciating every word. — “I never did.”
The old woman gave a bitter half-smile and shook her head, as if she held a secret he was too blind to see. Her thin lips curled slightly.
— “She’s out there, Andrew. She’s turning thirty soon.”
Steve had already opened the car door, waiting for his boss in the downpour. But Andrew stood paralyzed. He looked at the woman, and the foundation of his life—the one he thought was solid for decades—began to crack.
— “You’re confused,” Andrew’s voice wavered. — “You have the wrong person…”
