The late afternoon light streamed through the old oak trees in Maple Grove Cemetery, stretching long shadows across the rows of headstones. Mr. Harrison Cole knelt on the gravel path, his shoulders permanently curved as if grief itself had weight.
Small stones pressed into his knees.
In his hands, he held a bouquet of white daisies already drooping at the edges, their fading petals mirroring the exhaustion in his soul.
Every Sunday, without fail, he came.
Before him stood two white marble headstones, polished, cold, mercilessly final. The names engraved there carved into him each time he read them: Emily Cole and Grace Cole.
His twin daughters.
“My angels,” he murmured, voice frayed and fragile.
Two years earlier, a drunk driver had slammed into their car. One violent second had erased the laughter from his home. Since then, the house that once echoed with giggles and piano practice had fallen silent. Harrison moved through it like a visitor in his own life.
He barely noticed the small tug at his jacket sleeve.
It was so light it could have been wind.
He looked up.