The cemetery was a crooked chessboard of grass and stone, the pathways uneven, as if time itself had rearranged the tiles in defiance of symmetry. A man moved among the graves, brushing dust and wilted leaves from the markers, as though sweeping away memories that threatened to wake the dead from their endless sleep. When his task was done, he slipped out quietly, leaving the silence unbroken, just as the sun finished climbing from its slumber and spilled gold across the marble.
Martha entered with slow steps, her hand still bound in fresh white bandages, carrying a watering can that sloshed gently with each stride. She moved with a kind of weary devotion, as though every step through that sacred ground carried the weight of old guilt. Eventually, she stopped before a modest grave.
The stone read:
Joel Edwards Jr.
Rest in Peace
(Feb 27th, 2007 – May 10th, 2010)
A bittersweet smile touched Martha's lips as she crouched down.
"Hello again, brother," she murmured, her voice trembling at the edges. "I came to tend the flowers. Needed to... disconnect for a while."
She began arranging the bouquet she had brought, blossoms of different hues—roses, carnations, chrysanthemums—each color whispering its own story into the morning air.
"It's been so long, hasn't it?" she went on softly, pulling at weeds that had crept too close to the grave. "Strange, isn't it? That after all these years, I still come here, still take care of you. I guess some bonds don't rot with the body."
Her voice faltered, yet she pressed on.
"I need to tell you... your brother hasn't changed. He's still trapped in his cycle, still charging toward the same mistakes he made with you. I'm afraid he won't stop, not until something ends him—or worse, someone else. Maybe that's his fate. Maybe death is the only way he'll ever be freed from himself."
She rose slowly, pouring water over the flowers, droplets falling like tears onto the soil.
"You know, he still doesn't forgive himself for what happened to you. Not really. Deep down, he blames himself. And in a way... maybe he's right. Maybe it was his fault."
Her hand reached into her bag, pulling out a small sponge. She soaked it in water from the can and pressed it gently against the stone, wiping away stains of weather and dust. Her movements were almost maternal, as though she were bathing a child.
"You know what's strange?" Martha said, her voice steadier now. "Sometimes I'm glad he has that little girl to look after. She reminds me of you. The way she speaks, the way her words spill out with that quiet fire... It's like your drawings, your little sketches of dreams and futures. You used to draw your hope. She writes hers."
She laughed softly, though sorrow lay beneath the sound.
"Of course, he thinks caring for her will absolve him, that raising her is his road to forgiveness. But tell me, brother, how can a man forgive himself when his stubbornness towers higher than any grave? He's always been like this—hard, unyielding, blind to his own cracks."
Finishing her task, she left the sponge in the corner by the stone, whispering:
"Funny, isn't it? A dead man listens better than most of the living. I guess silence makes the best confessor. Anyway... rest easy, brother. Rest easy."
Her words dissolved into the air as she stood, the watering can now nearly empty. Around her feet, a cluster of lavender stood apart from the other flowers, rooted in the grass rather than the vase. They leaned toward the headstone as though yearning to join the bouquet above, but remained earthbound, condemned to worship from below while the chosen blossoms adorned the marble.
Martha's eyes lingered a moment longer before she turned away, walking slowly back through the graveyard's crooked paths until she reached her motorcycle—an old, weather-beaten machine that groaned at every start. She tipped the last of the water onto the grass, droplets sinking into the soil like final blessings.
Pulling out her phone, she dialed Kimberly's number. It rang once. Twice. Thrice. No answer. Martha's brow furrowed, unease gnawing at her chest. For a moment, she considered calling again. Instead, she slipped the phone back into her pocket. There were too many thoughts tangled inside her to chase one more.
With a turn of the key, the motorcycle sputtered to life, and Martha rode off, leaving behind the lavender, the grave, and the silence that held them both.
The basement door screeched as it opened, metal groaning like the gates of some forgotten crypt. A naked bulb swayed overhead, its light trembling across cracked concrete walls, throwing shadows that danced like restless ghosts. The air was heavy—sweat, smoke, rust, and fear.
Richardson sat bound to a chair in the center of the room. Rope bit into his wrists, his face already painted with bruises, lips split open from repeated blows. He said nothing. Each punch from Tommy, each slap from Oscar, he swallowed like poison without flinching—though his silence reeked of arrogance, not courage.
Paulie stood in the corner, leaning against a long, dust-choked desk. A cigar glowed between his fingers, smoke coiling lazily around a metallic revolver that rested on the wood—a pale, silver thing, cold as the moon. Beside it sat an old chair, worn, forgotten, waiting.
Raphael paced the room like a wolf measuring his prey. His voice cut through the stillness, sharp and cruel.
"I went to see her. Your mother. Or was it your grandmother? Doesn't matter. She told me she wanted you dead. Do you know why, Richardson? Tell me."
The prisoner spat blood onto the floor. "Because I was afraid."
"Afraid?" Raphael sneered. "Afraid of what? Of raising your daughter? Of being a father when the bottle was always closer? Or afraid that next time you staggered home drunk, you'd throw your child down the stairs instead of your wife?"
Richardson's eyes flared with defiance. "My daughter is mine. If she suffered, I pity her... but not you. Not Edwards. Not any of you."
Paulie exhaled smoke, watching it twist into the stale air. His voice was calm, almost nostalgic.
"I've known you a long time, Richardson. I've watched you fall piece by piece into that pit you built yourself—drunken rages, paranoia, madness. We cut you loose because we had to. And now? Now you're here for the same reason."
Richardson's jaw clenched. "And why? Because you're all Edwards's soldiers now?"
"No," Paulie murmured. "Because we owe him more than we'll ever owe you. That's business."
Another blow from Tommy snapped Richardson's head back, blood dripping down his chin. "Lucky Edwards ain't here," Tommy hissed. "If he was—"
The words never finished.
Raphael, standing near the door, froze. A silence deeper than fear fell upon the room, as though the air itself refused to move. Paulie smiled faintly without looking up; he didn't need to. He already knew.
The metal steps groaned under a single heavy gait.
Edwards entered.
He came limping, each step marked by pain, but nothing in his eyes betrayed weakness. His face was carved from stone, his stare so cold it seemed to darken the flickering light. Raphael looked at him with reverence and fear; Tommy and Oscar instinctively moved aside.
For the first time that night, Richardson's mask cracked. His body shrank against the chair, his eyes widening. "You... son of a bitch..."
Edwards didn't answer. Not yet. His silence was heavier than words, a silence that pressed on Richardson's chest like a blade. He walked forward slowly, each limp deliberate, until he stood before the desk. His gaze never left the man bound in the chair.
"May I?" Edwards asked quietly, nodding toward the revolver.
Paulie removed the cigar from his lips and handed it over. "All yours."
Edwards took the weapon, turned it once in his palm, then set it down carefully. He pulled the dusty chair forward and sat directly across from Richardson. The two men faced one another, predator and prey, though in truth the prey had been devoured long before Edwards entered the room.
Richardson struck first, not with fists, but with a desperate spit that landed on Edwards's jacket.
Edwards calmly brushed it away. His voice, when it came, was soft but lethal.
"You bastard... give me back my daughter! She's mine! You'll never raise her, never touch my wife, never—"
The words died in his throat. He saw it—the eyes of Edwards, no longer human, colder than steel, red in his imagination like the embers of hell. For the first time, Richardson knew true terror.
Edwards leaned forward, his breath sharp, his voice thunderous.
"You knew your crime from the beginning. You came home reeking of liquor, God knows from where, and hurled your wife down the stairs. You abandoned your child. And only now do you claim to care for her?" His hand trembled, not from fear, but fury so pure it rattled the bulb above them.
He shouted now, voice rising like a storm.
"I heard Sarah's screams when I found her in your neighbors' house—screams that should have torn through your soul but never reached you, because you were drowning yourself in another bottle! I nearly ended my own life that night, Richardson, do you understand? I wanted the gun in my mouth, just to make the sound stop! And why? Do you know why?"
The room shook with his rage. Tommy's knees nearly buckled.
"Where were you when Iris faced the test alone? When she bore the weight of a child she never wanted—while you vanished into the darkness you chose! YOU WANTED THAT CHILD AND STILL, SHE WAS YOURS!"
The bulb quivered violently, throwing harsh light against the walls.
Richardson closed his eyes, whispering, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."
"Don't," Edwards snarled. "Don't speak to me of sorrow. Your apologies are as empty as your soul."
His breathing grew ragged. He rose suddenly, kicking the chair into splinters. The fragments scattered like bones across the floor. He stood over Richardson, his shadow swallowing him whole.
"Now I want you to say it, I want you to say that you abandoned your daughter, tell me, SAY IT, SAY IT-!!!"
"I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD, I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD, I'VE ABANDONED MY GIRL..." Richardson screamed with such desperation, chuckled three times.
Edwards fell silent for moment, everyone watching the scene with feelings difficult to understand...
And then, he continued.
"You don't know how much your daughter suffered," Edwards roared. "How she clung to her imagination because it was the only place she could survive! She cried and cried, without even knowing why, because you—YOU—taught her grief before she learned words! And still I tried to help you. Still I thought you could be saved. What a fool I was."
With every word, he stomped the broken chair, splinters cracking beneath his boots. Richardson wept silently, shaking, the man's defiance finally shattered.
Edwards raised the revolver. His voice became a litany, a curse, a sentence.
"I will shoot you in the knee so you never run again.
In your groin so you never breed again.
In your chest so you never feel again.
And in your head—so you never think again."
Richardson whimpered, broken. "Please... let me... just say something. Please."
Edwards's voice was low, almost tender. "What a son of a bitch you are... truly... you're a bastard. But you know what? I've become a better person because of you, and little by little, all this shit, everything around me, is finally ending. So... at least I owe you one favor. The favor I'll grant you is this,you'll have some last words. Because, Richardson... you've already been sentenced by the gods, and by men alike."
Richardson swallowed hard. "Please... make sure my money goes to my mother." the words finally tense Edwards one last time and...
"She's all I—she's all I have left. She needs—"
The words ended in fire.
The gun barked four times in brutal succession.
The knee.
The groin.
The chest.
The head.
Each shot tore a scream from Richardson's throat, then silence. Four seconds was all it took to erase him. Blood sprayed the walls, dripping into the floor, his eyes frozen open, fixed on the trembling light above.
Tommy and Oscar stood paralyzed. Paulie lowered his cigar slowly, for the first time without words.
Edwards's chest heaved. His hand lowered the revolver with deliberate calm.
Paulie finally asked, "Do we send his money to his family?"
Edwards turned his head, his voice flat as stone.
"What family does he have? He lost them all long ago."
He limped toward the stairs, staggering, nearly collapsing from his wound. Raphael moved to steady him, but Edwards brushed him off.
"Deal with the body," he growled. "And leave me the hell alone."
He climbed into the darkness above, leaving behind blood, smoke, and the silence of judgment fulfilled.
Edwards staggered toward his car, every limp weighted with more than just the pain in his leg. When his trembling hand brushed the rear panel, his body betrayed him. A torrent of bile, yellow as sickened sunlight, spilled onto the gravel. It hissed against the ground like a confession forced from the depths of his stomach. Edwards knew well enough that this sickness did not belong to his wound alone, it was everything.
Wiping his mouth with a crumpled napkin, he forced his eyes to the rear seat. With deliberate care, as though handling a relic of innocence in a desecrated temple, he fixed a child's seat in place. The belt clicked with finality, like a vow spoken to no one but himself. A seat meant not for the sins of the father, but for the fragile hope of a future. He closed the door with a muted thud, slid into the driver's seat, and stowed the gleaming revolver, still warm from judgment, in the glove box. With one hand pressed to his bleeding side and the other gripping the wheel, Edwards drove away from the underworld he had created.
At that very hour, silence wrapped itself around another corner of the city, one as sterile as a shrine: Iris's hospital room. Machines whispered in their steady rhythms, her breath a ghost threading through their cadence. She lay adrift in sleep, untouched by what had transpired, blind to what had been, ignorant of what was yet to come. Her world was a fragile cocoon of dreams, unaware that the threads binding her fate were unraveling just beyond the threshold.
The door creaked open. Then closed. The sound was soft, yet heavy with meaning, like the turning of a final page. Kimberly entered, thinner than before, shadows carved beneath her eyes, her frame more sorrow than flesh. She approached her daughter's bedside, her movements deliberate, as though each step had been rehearsed countless times in her mind. She sat, pulled a chair closer, and took Iris's limp hand in hers.
"Hello, my daughter," Kimberly whispered, her voice a quiver against the silence. "I know you don't recognize me now... but I needed to tell you, you're the last piece I have left."
Her eyes fell upon the hand she clutched, fragile and warm, a tether to a life she could no longer carry.
"That's all that's left for me," she continued after a breathless pause. "And even that... it doesn't feel like enough anymore. You ran from me, and your father ran even farther. Everyone wants me dead, Iris. Everyone. Edwards was the only one who stayed, the only one who helped, and even he is broken now, bleeding out somewhere because of us. But I've suffered so much, blamed myself for so long, that I've reached a place where nothing matters anymore. When there's no fear left, no joy, no spark... what good is living?"
Her grip on Iris's hand trembled, but she didn't release it.
"I am extinguished, daughter. I've tried again and again to light the candle inside me, but it always died, leaving only melted wax clinging to itself, one breath away from oblivion. And now... you are grown. You no longer need me to tend to you. You have your own life to protect. You have your daughter. And these—" her voice cracked as she gestured to the lavender bouquet resting on the bedside table, "—these are yours now. I could never hold together..."
Kimberly rose to her feet, her frailty eclipsed by a sudden, dreadful resolve. Her shadow stretched long against the sterile wall, a silhouette of finality. She leaned over Iris once more, pressing a trembling hand to her daughter's cheek.
"I'll wait for you in the sky, and when you come, I'll sing you a lullaby again", she murmured. "I love you, Iris".
Her palm slid from Iris's face to the windowpane as she turned away, pressing against the cold glass as though imprinting a farewell. Then she left, slowly, firmly, walking with the weight of one who had already crossed into another world.
Seconds passed. Long, aching seconds that stretched into an eternity.
And then, like the faintest tremor in the earth before a quake—the fingers of Iris's hand twitched. They opened, weakly, impossibly, as though reaching back toward the absence Kimberly had left behind. The gesture was small, almost imperceptible, yet it carried the weight of an entire storm.
Though her eyes remained closed, Iris was more awake in that moment than she had ever been.
Meanwhile, Sarah sat in the corner of the schoolyard, her legs crossed tightly, hands fidgeting in her lap as if trying to keep her nerves from spilling out into the open. Her face was pale, her eyes restless, darting between the children playing, the teachers watching, and the horizon beyond the gates. She did not want to speak to anyone. Words had become dangerous to her—each syllable a thread tied to fear.
Outside the fence, Edwards parked his car and leaned back against the seat, his body still aching, one hand pressed to his wounded side. He waited silently, watching the school doors like a soldier guarding the last fortress that still mattered.
Inside, laughter erupted across the playground. A ball, wild and careless, bounced against Sarah's shoulder. The strike wasn't hard, but the sound and surprise of it made her flinch. Her hand rose to her face as if shielding herself from a blow, and for a moment her eyes brimmed with tears. She was about to cry when a boy her age came running after the ball.
He bent to pick it up, his cheeks flushed with play, his presence carrying the kind of innocence Sarah had almost forgotten existed. Looking at her with wide, curious eyes, he asked, "Are you okay?"
For most children, those words were nothing—a simple courtesy, the kind taught by kind parents and practiced without thought. But for Sarah, they were everything. They were words she had only ever heard from her mother, words that had become as rare as air underwater. They struck her heart like a bell, and suddenly, though her nerves tangled tighter inside her, they felt bearable, almost softened by that kindness.
"I... I'm fine, I guess," she stammered, standing slowly.
"My name's Brian," the boy said, holding the ball casually at his hip.
Before she could answer, another voice called out from the football pitch: "Brian, hurry up! Kick it back!"
Brian smiled, kicked the ball toward the field, and then turned back to Sarah. His gaze lingered, as if she were not just another face in the schoolyard but something different, something he couldn't quite name.
"S... Sarah," she whispered at last. "Thank you."
"Thank you? For what?"
"For... this."
"The ball? You're a strange girl," Brian laughed lightly.
"No... not that. For asking me if I was okay."
Brian tilted his head. "That's normal. My parents taught me to do that."
The bell rang then, but to them it was only a distant hum, swallowed by the small moment they were creating. It wasn't until one of Brian's friends ran up, tugging his sleeve, that time caught up with them again.
"Come on, Brian! Your mother's waiting!"
Brian nodded, glancing back one last time before he left with the others. Sarah, however, lingered. She walked out of the schoolyard last, her eyes greener than they had ever been, shimmering with something she didn't yet understand. She couldn't look toward Brian again, her heart was too loud, her chest too full.
But when she stepped outside and saw Edwards rising painfully from his car, she couldn't contain herself. She ran like no one else, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.
"Mr. Edwards!" she cried, her voice breaking with relief. "You're okay... you're okay..."
Edwards bent slightly, clutching his side, but managed a weary smile. "I'm here, little one. How are you?"
Sarah clung to him before answering, her words tumbling out between breaths. "I... I met a boy at school. I couldn't stop looking at him. What is this feeling? Am I... am I in love?"
With Edwards's help, she climbed into the car, settling into her child's seat as he buckled her in. He eased into the driver's seat, adjusting himself slowly, every motion heavy with the shadow of pain.
He chuckled softly. "Love, hm? Strange for someone as young as you to fall in love already. Tell me, how did it happen?"
Sarah's face glowed with a fragile brightness. "He asked me if I was okay. That's it. And... it was like my heart exploded and came back to life in a second."
The car pulled away from the curb, weaving through the streets while Edwards kept one hand steady on the wheel and the other against his wound.
"I want to see him again, Mr. Edwards," Sarah whispered. "Will you help me?"
"Of course," Edwards said gently. "But let me give you some advice. Don't get too carried away. First loves... they don't usually last forever."
Sarah frowned, confused. "Why not?"
"You'll understand one day," Edwards replied, his tone carrying the weight of scars unseen. "When you hold on too tightly, the pain of letting go is worse than it needs to be. And it will come, little one. That pain always comes."
Though his words were too adult, too heavy for her years, Sarah somehow understood. Her innocence didn't reject them—it carried them like a seed she would keep until she was old enough to watch it bloom.
"I get it," she said softly. "But I think this is different. He and I... we share!"
Edwards smiled faintly, despite himself. "Then confess it to him. Tell him how you feel. Make him comfortable, and the rest will flow naturally. And if it doesn't—then he isn't your true love."
Sarah paused, her small hands tightening around the straps of her seatbelt. "My mother once told me there's only one true love in the whole world. Is that true, Mr. Edwards?"
He grew silent for a moment, staring at the road as if it were a timeline unspooling before his eyes. Then he nodded slowly.
"Yes, child. It's true. Too true. Each of us only has one, and we either find it... or lose it forever. I have mine. Your mother had hers. And you... perhaps you've already met yours today."
Sarah's face lit up with determination, her green eyes glowing like jewels catching the sun. "Then Brian will be my true love!"
For the first time in what felt like ages, Edwards laughed, not bitterly, not hollowly, but with something warm. For a fleeting moment, the shadows that haunted him fell away, and he felt as though he were part of something resembling a family.
For a moment, life almost seemed merciful.
But this just dissapeared in a few minutes, the car rolled to a slow stop at the entrance of the hospital after twenty-four long minutes of silence broken only by the hum of the engine. In the back seat, Sarah turned her head, her small voice hesitant but tender.
"Hello, Grandma."
Kimberly's reply was faint, almost mechanical. "Hello, Sarah."
"Don't you want to sit in the front, Grandma?" Sarah tilted her head, her innocence cutting through the tension like a fragile candle in a storm.
"No," Kimberly said softly, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular. "I'd rather stay here... with my granddaughter. To say goodbye."
"Goodbye?" Sarah blinked, confused.
Edwards gripped the wheel tighter. He had already understood. His hand drifted toward the locked compartment beneath the dashboard, brushing the cold steel hidden inside. The faintest motion, enough to draw Kimberly's attention. Their eyes met in the mirror. She nodded.
"That's right," she said at last.
Edwards closed his eyes for a brief moment, a sigh escaping his lips, before turning the key. The car lurched forward again, carrying them toward a darker inevitability.
"But what does that mean, Grandma?" Sarah pressed, her voice carrying that childlike insistence. "What do you mean, you're leaving?"
The girl's questions rained endlessly through the rest of the drive, a stream of innocence against the wall of silence and despair. Kimberly's face hardened. She tried to mask her trembling hands, her jaw tight with the burden of what she was about to do. It was a cruelty beyond words—yet it was the only truth she believed remained to her.
Finally Edwards spoke, his voice steady but thick. "Sarah, today we're going somewhere you'll really like. But first, we need to drop off your grandmother. She has... business to finish."
Sarah turned, curiosity blooming in her eyes. "What kind of place?"
"You'll see soon enough," Edwards replied.
Sarah smiled faintly, reassured, while Kimberly turned her gaze out the window, unable to face her granddaughter's joy. The glass became a shield, a veil, as she ignored Sarah's next words.
"Grandma... I think I fell in love today."
The silence that followed was unbearable. Kimberly didn't answer, didn't even turn her head. Sarah blinked, confused, but let the thought slip away. She was still, after all, only a child—small enough to believe love could fix anything, too young to grasp when silence meant finality.
At last, the car left the road, crunching across grass until it stopped at the edge of a forest clearing. Before them lay a river, its surface calm and silver, and a wooden pier hidden among the trees like a secret passageway to nowhere.
Edwards inhaled heavily, his chest rising and falling as if weighed by chains. "Sarah," he said softly, turning to her. "Say goodbye to your grandmother now. Stay here. And take this."
From the compartment, he pulled a small case of earplugs, slipping them into Sarah's hand. Behind them, he carefully, silently withdrew the revolver.
"What are these for?" she asked, puzzled.
"Just put them in, little one. Don't make this harder than it already is."
Confusion clouded Sarah's face, but she obeyed, fitting the earplugs carefully. The world dulled into silence, the voices of the grown-ups now nothing more than muffled movements of lips.
Kimberly leaned down, pressing a kiss against Sarah's forehead. Her voice trembled as she whispered words Sarah couldn't truly hear: Behave well, little one. The future is yours.
Sarah could only whisper back, "Goodbye," her own voice small, distant in her ears.
Then, with deliberate slowness, Kimberly and Edwards stepped out of the car. Their footsteps carried them to the pier, each plank groaning beneath the weight of sorrow. The river lapped gently, unaware of the storm at its edge.
Kimberly placed her hands on the railing, staring into the water as though it might reflect something worth saving. Edwards stood beside her, his hand heavy with the revolver, his face lined with desperation.
"Why are you doing this?" His voice cracked, raw and pleading. "Why end it all? Why now?"
"Just give me the gun," Kimberly replied, her gaze never leaving the current. "And it will be over quickly."
Edwards shook his head, trying once more, clinging to hope as a drowning man clings to driftwood. "What about Iris? What will happen when she wakes... when she opens her eyes and sees her mother—"
"Give it to me," she cut in sharply, her tone final.
The words struck him harder than a blow. His throat tightened, disbelief flooding him. "It's true, then... you don't love anyone."
"That's why I want it to end," she murmured.
For a long moment, Edwards searched her face, hoping for a flicker of doubt, a trace of resistance. But all he saw was the resolve of someone already gone. With a defeated exhale, he slid the revolver along the railing, its metal scraping the wood until it stopped at her side.
He couldn't bear to watch. Slowly, he turned and began walking away, each step heavy, each breath cut short by the weight of his failure.
Back in the hospital, far away yet bound to them by invisible thread, Iris's body began to stir. A beep quickened on the heart monitor. Her hands twitched, her head shifted. Life fought its way back into her veins.
At the river, Kimberly turned, her back to the water. She lifted the revolver with trembling hands. For one last moment, she closed her eyes as the world narrowed into silence.
The gunshot cracked through the forest. A splash followed—the river swallowing her body, red threads spreading across its surface. The weapon clattered to the pier, abandoned.
Edwards froze where he stood, his fists tightening, his teeth grinding against the scream he could not let escape. He could not save her. He had failed them all.
And in that same instant, in the pale hospital room, Iris opened her eyes.
And so, with the steady beat of Iris's pulse echoing like a drum of resurrection, Edwards walked back toward the car. Each step carried the weight of defeat, his shoes pressing against the damp earth, leaving behind imprints as fragile as fading memories. Behind him, the river had already begun its work, its current dyed by a dark bloom spreading outward, while birds scattered from the trees, abandoning the scene as though nature itself wished to turn its face away. A single body drifted, surrendered to the water's embrace, while Edwards, wounded in spirit, drew in a heavy breath and forced himself forward.
He opened the car door and slid into the driver's seat, the silence pressing on him like stone. His chest rose and fell as though he had run for miles, though all he had done was live through another loss.
After several seconds, he turned his head toward the child in the back. "Give me the earplugs, sweetheart?"
Sarah blinked, unsure why the world had gone quiet, but she obeyed. With a hint of shyness, almost embarrassed by her ignorance of what had just transpired, she pulled them out and placed them in his hand. Edwards took them carefully, his fingers trembling.
Her curiosity broke through. "And... where did grandma have to go?"
Edwards's throat tightened. He searched for words and found none that could hold the truth. At last, he forced out the only version she could bear. "She had to go to another place. Because she wanted the gift I'm about to give you to be yours alone. She wanted you to feel it without anyone else's shadow."
Sarah's eyes widened. "And... what's the gift?"
His voice cracked, but he managed a smile. "The gifts are never said.. before their time..."
Her face lit up instantly, a child's unfiltered joy, unaware of the storm hidden beneath his words. Edwards's eyes stung with tears, and as he turned the key in the ignition, Sarah leaned forward, and she said.
"I love you, dad..."
The word struck him like a blade. For a moment, Edwards's entire world collapsed inward. His hands gripped the wheel, his body folded, and his chest convulsed with sobs he could no longer contain. The man who had fought battles and carried burdens far too heavy was broken at last by a single word of love. His tears fell onto the wheel, and he hid his face as Sarah watched with confusion, not yet understanding the depth of his pain.
Every innocent question from her lips was mirrored elsewhere, by each new breath Iris drew within the hospital room. With every "Why?" from Sarah, Iris inhaled deeper; with every "What's wrong?" her lungs filled more fully. The rhythm of a child's wonder echoed as a mother's body fought its way back to life.
Outside, the world seemed to take notice. A lavender blossom, carried by the breeze, drifted from the sky and landed in a shallow pool beside the road, its violet reflection trembling on the water's surface. Back in the hospital, the bouquet of lavender beside Iris's bed remained untouched by decay, its stems still upright, its fragrance still alive.
For as Kimberly had once whispered, if the lavender does not die, neither will Iris. And so, neither will her.
TO BE CONTINUED...