I woke up before my grandmother out of pure habit, my brain still expecting the quiet clink of a vase and the soft snip of scissors. But there was no clink. No snip. Just silence. I was standing in the kitchen, staring at the empty vase on the table, when a knock rattled the front door.
It wasn’t the casual neighbor kind of knock. It was firm. Deliberate. Like someone was delivering something important and had rehearsed the courage to do it. My stomach tightened.
I opened the door, and a man stood there wearing a dark coat. He was somewhere between fifty and sixty, with graying hair and a face that looked like it knew how to hold secrets. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even really look at me at first. His gaze slid past my shoulder, into the house, as if he was checking whether the right walls were listening.
He cleared his throat. “Good morning,” he said. His voice sounded careful. “I’m here for Thomas. He asked me to deliver this to his wife after his death.”
My hands went cold. “I—” I started, but my voice failed. “He’s… he passed away.”
“I know,” the man said quietly. And that quietness—like he’d already grieved in advance—made my throat sting.
Behind me, I heard my grandmother’s footsteps. Faster than they’d been all week. “Who is it?” she called. I stepped aside as she came into view.
She was wearing her robe, hair pinned back hastily like she’d woken up in the middle of a dream and couldn’t find the edge of it. Her eyes landed on the man and narrowed with a confusion that looked almost annoyed—like the universe was interrupting her mourning with paperwork.
The man held out a bouquet. It was simple and beautiful—white lilies and pale pink roses wrapped in brown paper, like the kind my grandfather used to bring when he wanted to say something without using words. And in his other hand, an envelope. No return address. Just one name, written in my grandfather’s unmistakable handwriting: Evelyn.
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