The gravedigger shook his head, a small movement full of grim certainty. “Your father planned this a long time ago.”
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
A text from my mother.
Come home alone.
I frowned immediately.
Not because of the words themselves, but because of the way they were written.
My mother never texted like that.
She was one of those women who still treated text messages like handwritten notes. She opened with honey or sweetheart, added too many commas, too many exclamation points, and somehow managed to sound warm even through a phone screen. She would have written: Honey, come home when you can. I need you. Or: Julian sweetheart, please come by the house alone.
Not this.
Not three cold words that felt more like an order than a request.
The gravedigger saw my face change.
“Let me guess,” he said quietly. “She wants you to go home.”
I looked up sharply.
“How did you—”
“Don’t go.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“Whatever you do, don’t go home. Not yet. Go to unit 17.”
“Who are you?”
“Marcus Webb.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He hesitated, then drew an envelope from inside his coat. It was old, yellowed at the edges, sealed, my name written across the front in handwriting that made my stomach drop.
It was my father’s.
I would have known it anywhere. Strong, slanted, careful. The handwriting from birthday cards, permission slips, notes left on the kitchen counter all through my childhood.
Marcus held out the envelope. “He gave me this twenty years ago. Told me if the day ever came that I had to hand you that key, I was to give you this too.”
My mouth went dry.
“Twenty years?”
“He said you’d ask questions.” Marcus gave a tired, humorless smile. “Said you were a lawyer and you’d want proof.”
I took the envelope slowly, as though it might vanish if I moved too fast.
“Why you?” I asked.
“Because your father trusted me.” His gaze shifted toward the road bordering the cemetery. “And because I owed him.”
“Owed him for what?”
Marcus looked at me, and in that moment he seemed older than the graveyard itself.
“For a kindness nobody else would have given me.”
My phone was still warm in my hand. The text from my mother glowed on the screen, wrong in ways I couldn’t explain. The key pressed into my palm felt suddenly heavier than metal should.
Marcus leaned closer.
“Go to the storage unit now. Don’t stop anywhere. Don’t go home. And if that message feels wrong to you, trust that feeling. Your father was afraid of exactly this.”
“Afraid of what?”
I read it three times.
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