Echoes Among Stones
The air was thick with the scent of oak and sharp pine. Elias carried a dense bouquet of hydrangeas, his sister’s favourite. His hand hit unfamiliar fencing. When had they installed this?
He started his count again from the fence. Seven straight. Turn right. Three tombstones. Left.
The count felt right. The path felt wrong.
He hesitated, then knelt. His fingers found the vase. He placed the hydrangeas inside, adjusting the stems.
***
Rachel gripped the lilies until the paper crinkled.
Lilies. Always lilies. Mumma had kept them on the kitchen table every week. “Elegant,” she’d say, stroking the white petals.
Rachel was near the gate when someone collided against her. The lilies hit the gravel, scattering pale petals everywhere.
“I’m sorry-”
“Don’t.” She hissed. Her throat closed when she saw the white cane.
He moved away quickly. His tap-tap-tap fading between stone rows.
She carried the dirt-stained lilies past the new fence line, walking closer to the rows of graves than usual.
Rachel’s hands went numb when she saw her mother’s tombstone.
The granite shone, freshly cleaned.
The vase was full. Hydrangeas.
Mumma had despised hydrangeas. But Fable had always loved them. Bold, blue, impossible to ignore.
Just like her.
Her chest tightened. Had Fable come back? But Fable knew Mumma hated hydrangeas.
Then why?
Rachel looked closer and picked up a card, placed under the vase: For Grace. Miss you always. Love, E.
These weren’t for her mother. Fable hadn’t been here.
Who was E? Who was Grace?
She scanned nearby stones. Two rows over, a newer marker: GRACE MATTHEWS.
Of course, the fence! The new fence ran right between the graves, cutting the old path. It was the only reason she was standing this close.
Maybe someone had counted from the wrong place. Someone who couldn’t see. The man with the cane.
If the fence hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been rerouted. But he had, and now she was staring at flowers that had travelled the wrong path to give her the right answer.
She pulled out her phone. Her thumb hovered over Fable’s name. Fable. Her sister.
The one with whom she hadn’t spoken in ten years. For reasons that now felt ridiculous.
She pressed call.
“Rachel?! Is everything alright?”
“No… I miss you.”
Silence.
Then a sob.
“I’m sorry.” Fable’s voice broke. “I’ve wanted to call you every day since…”
“Since?”
“Since the baby was born. A girl. Last month. On the 16th.”
The 16th. The day their mother died.
“We named her Lily.”
“Can I meet her?” Rachel whispered.
“Please.” Fable was crying too.
Rachel walked over two rows, cleaned Grace Matthews’s gravestone and placed the Hydrangeas in the empty vase, where they belonged. Where someone had tried so hard to bring them.
She returned to her mother’s plot, arranged her crushed lilies in the empty space.
“From both of us now, Mumma.”
She walked toward the exit.
Toward Fable.
Toward a baby girl named after a flower her grandmother loved.
***