Chapter 1: The Funeral
The soil on Rose’s grave was still fresh when Arthur spoke.
He stood beside the coffin in his expensive gray suit, looking more annoyed than heartbroken. His three daughters — Lucy, Rachel, and little April — stood quietly beside me, their grandfather.
“If no one wants them, I’ll hand them over to Child Protective Services on Monday,” Arthur said loudly. “I’m not wasting my life raising three girls whose mother is already dead.”
A heavy silence fell over the cemetery.
More than two hundred people had come to mourn my daughter. Now they all stood frozen, staring at Arthur in disbelief.
I felt April’s small hand tighten around mine. She was only six. Lucy, twelve, held her mother’s photo so tightly her knuckles turned white. Rachel, nine, stared at the grave with empty eyes.
Arthur checked his phone and smiled faintly at a message. Then he looked at me.
“Charles, don’t make this difficult. Rose is gone. I have a right to move on.”
“And your daughters?” I asked.
He glanced at the girls for less than a second.
“My fiancée doesn’t want to raise another woman’s children. If you care so much, you take them.”
He turned and walked toward a white van parked outside the cemetery. A young woman in sunglasses was waiting inside. Arthur got in without looking back.
I looked down at my granddaughters.
“You’re coming home with me,” I said quietly.
None of them cried. They simply nodded, as if they had already expected this.
As we walked away from the grave, I noticed something strange. The three sisters kept exchanging quiet looks. It wasn’t grief.
May you like
It was something else.
Something that made me feel they already knew something I didn’t.
