Our daughter, the one I had buried, remained a ghost in our lives.
She was locked away in care, a secret we carried like a heavy stone.
Social services held all the cards, their decisions cloaked in bureaucratic language that I couldn’t unravel.
Each call to them was met with polite dismissal.
Each meeting with caseworkers left me feeling invisible, like my voice didn’t matter.
“Every time,” I thought, “they remind me of rules I can’t fight.”
Eight years had passed since that first grave was dug, and our daughter’s absence had shaped every choice we made.
Now, a meeting loomed on the horizon, a final review by the agency.
If they decided against us, it might seal a fate more permanent than the grave I dug so many years ago.
I hadn’t told my wife yet.
The thought of facing them, of facing what we had done—and what was yet undone—was suffocating.
The night air was cold, and the ground was hardening where I’d stopped digging.
Somewhere in that dark, unresolved space lay the fragile hope and the creeping fear that the worst was still ahead.
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