He came to say goodbye to his ex-wife, only to find two little girls at her grave who called her mommy, and looked exactly like him. The summer heat clung to the air like a memory that wouldn’t fade as Jonathan Blake stepped out of his black car, the gravel crunching softly beneath his polished shoes. The cemetery was quiet, shaded by tall trees that swayed gently in the breeze, and the sky above was a cloudless, pale blue.
Dressed in a crisp blue suit, his jacket open and tie slightly loosened, Jonathan looked nothing like the grieving man he was trying to become. His chestnut brown hair was neatly styled, his brown eyes calm on the surface, but underneath that expensive fabric and cool demeanor, he felt something churning. It had been over five years since he had last seen Emily, and in all that time, he had kept their past locked tightly away, buried under mergers, private jets, and boardrooms.
But death has a way of unlocking doors you thought were sealed for good. He hadn’t even known she was sick. The news of her passing had come not from a friend or family member but from a former classmate who messaged him after seeing the obituary online.
She had been living quietly in the town where they’d once started their life together, before everything fell apart, before ambition pulled him one direction and grief the other. He didn’t come back for the funeral. He couldn’t.
Maybe he was a coward. Maybe he thought too much time had passed. But when the weight of it caught up with him weeks later, he found himself unable to breathe until he finally got in the car and made the three-hour drive from the city, telling himself it was just to say goodbye, nothing more.
As he walked between the rows of headstones, scanning names etched in stone, he felt time folding in on itself. The last time he was here, they had been picking out burial arrangements for her mother. Now, here he was, alone, approaching the grave of the woman he once promised forever to, and abandoned before their future could even begin to heal.
But it wasn’t the name on the grave that stopped him in his tracks. It was the two small figures kneeling beside it. He saw them from a distance at first, two little girls, maybe five years old, with matching brown hair pulled into low pigtails and wearing red sweaters that looked far too warm for the summer air.
They were whispering softly to each other, wiping their eyes with the sleeves of their sweaters. One of them was clutching a small bouquet of wildflowers. The other was holding what looked like a folded piece of paper.
Jonathan hesitated, unsure if he was intruding. But something compelled him forward. As he stepped closer, the girls looked up, startled by the sudden presence of a stranger.
Their eyes, big, round, and unmistakably familiar, locked onto his, and something inside his chest shifted painfully. Hi, he said, his voice quieter than he expected. Are you here to visit someone? One of the girls nodded slowly.
This is our mommy’s grave, she said, her voice fragile but clear. Her name was Emily. He froze.