The air was still—no rustle of leaves, no birdsong, as if nature itself held its breath in solemn silence. The mourners stood quietly around the open casket and the gaping grave beside it. Lucy held her father’s arm, feeling the weight of his slumped shoulders as he stared blankly at Mum’s lifeless face.
Nearby stood their parents’ closest friends: Margaret and her husband, Vincent. Lucy had known them since childhood, always calling them by their first names. Margaret dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief while Vincent gazed past the coffin, lost in thought. Across from them stood three of Mum’s colleagues from the university, their noses red, their eyes swollen from crying. Then there were strangers—faces Lucy had never seen—yet they must have known Mum, or they wouldn’t be here.
No one stepped forward anymore to say their final goodbyes or offer condolences. Everything had been done at the chapel. Now they waited, suspended in this unbearable stillness.
Lucy caught the gravediggers’ eyes. The taller one, likely in charge, raised a brow as if to ask, *Time?* She gave the faintest nod. At once, they lifted the coffin lid, propped against a nearby oak, and moved into position.
*”All said their farewells? We’re closing it now,”* the gravedigger announced.
Then—a quiet but commanding voice cut through the silence.
*”Wait.”*
Every head turned. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a black trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat approached the coffin. The workers paused, the lid still in their hands. The stranger placed two white roses inside, then rested his palm over Mum’s folded hands as if to warm them. He stood like that for a long moment while the others watched, bewildered. One of the gravediggers cleared his throat, urging him to hurry. With a final glance, the man stepped back, vanishing into the crowd as swiftly as he’d appeared.
Lucy was the first to toss a handful of soil onto the coffin when it was lowered. As the gravediggers worked, she searched for the stranger, but he was gone. When the wreaths and the polished headstone were finally in place, the mourners drifted away in a slow procession. Only Lucy and her father lingered, standing together in wordless grief.
*”Dad, let’s go,”* she whispered, and he let her lead him away.
All the way home, her thoughts strayed back to that mysterious man. Who was he? He had slipped in unnoticed and vanished just as quietly. His hat had hidden his face—she’d only caught a glimpse of a clean-shaven chin and what might’ve been glasses.
The wake was held at a quiet café near their house. Lucy picked at her food, exhaustion pulling at her bones. She just wanted it all to be over. Finally, the last guests left. Lucy carried Mum’s framed portrait—identical to the one left at the grave—close to her chest as they walked home.
*”How are you holding up?”* she asked her father.
He only nodded.
*”Dad… that man at the graveside. Do you know who he was?”*
*”How would I?”* There was an edge in his voice, sharp enough to make her drop it.
The flat still smelled of antiseptic and sickness, no matter how wide Lucy opened the windows. Her father collapsed onto the sofa, shielding his eyes with one arm. She draped a blanket over him and sat beside him, her gaze drifting toward Mum’s room.
*”Finally at peace,”* Lucy echoed the words whispered by nearly every mourner. Peace for all of them. Mum, freed from the agony of her illness. Lucy, from the sleepless nights of waiting for the inevitable. And her father—from the helplessness of watching the woman he loved waste away.
Tears welled up. She retreated to the kitchen, letting them fall silently into her folded arms.
As the weeks passed, the sharpest edges of grief dulled. Lucy cleared away the remnants of Mum’s sickness from the bedroom. She returned to university, but the emptiness inside remained.
Her father barely spoke, shuffling around in his slippers like an old man. The sound grated on her. Wasn’t she grieving too? She’d lost her mother. And now the weight of the household—and her father’s silence—fell squarely on her shoulders.
One evening, desperate to break the quiet, she asked, *”What should we do with Mum’s clothes? They won’t fit me.”*
*”Give them away,”* he muttered.
*To whom?* Over the weekend, she sorted through Mum’s belongings. The newer pieces she kept aside; the rest she bundled into a sack for charity. There was no guilt—only discomfort.
The shoes didn’t fit either. She left the worn pairs by the bins. But in one box, she found pristine white heels, never worn. When she tried them on, they were too big. As she tucked them back, her fingers brushed the bottom of the box—three yellowed envelopes, postmarked two decades ago.
Two were addressed to Mum, a month apart. The third had arrived two years later. None bore a return address.
*Why had Mum hidden them here? Why keep them at all?* Reading someone else’s letters was wrong… but Mum was gone. Maybe whoever wrote them was too.
Lucy set the box aside but couldn’t stop thinking about them.
She *had* to know.
If there had been a real secret, Mum would have destroyed them. Maybe she’d left them for Lucy to find.
Taking a steadying breath, she unfolded the first letter.
*…You are my happiness. I’ve only just left, and I already miss you terribly… Thank you for being in my life. I think of you constantly. I love you…*
A lover’s parting words.
The second letter made her hands tremble.
*…I feared this, but it was inevitable. Thank you for telling me. What will you do? You know I’m married—I never hid that. I have two children… I can’t leave them. But you’re young and beautiful. You’ll marry someday. Still, the choice is yours… If you keep the child, let me know. I’ll send money. Don’t refuse it. It’s the least I can do…*
More confessions of love, regret over time’s cruelty.
The third letter was the hardest.
*…I don’t deny my fault. But what’s done is done… You named her Lucy? I’m leaving. I don’t know when—or if—I’ll return. Live. Be free. Don’t wait for me. Don’t look back. Keep this secret. Burn these letters. Thank you for being in my life…*
No signatures. No names. Only Lucy’s—once.
That meant the man who raised her wasn’t her real father. There was another. Mum had loved someone before him.
At the bottom of the last letter, a small checkmark—like a bird in flight.
*Why had Mum kept them? Couldn’t bear to burn them? Or had she wanted Lucy to know?*
She tucked the letters beneath her clothes in the wardrobe. Her father would never look there.
They had rarely argued. Never had Lucy doubted his love—for Mum or for her. He’d sat by her bedside when she was ill, taken her sledging, scolded her when he caught her smoking…
And the other man? A stranger who’d abandoned them both.
Lucy resolved never to tell her father. He had no one else. And if she confessed she knew the truth, she’d take even *herself* away from him.
Then she remembered the man at the graveside.
*Had that been him?* If so, he’d loved her. Enough to risk being seen. But why hide his face?
Lucy studied herself in the mirror. She didn’t look like Mum. Or like her father.
How had she never noticed before?
By her final year at university, a prestigious magazine celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a lavish gala. The journalism department received a handful of invitations, and Lucy’s boyfriend, Callum, secured one.
*”Coming?”* he asked, waving the ticket.
*”Obviously!”* she laughed.
The grand ballroom overflowed with celebrities, champagne flutes clinking under crystal chandeliers. Waiters wove through the crowd while speeches and applause filled the air.
Above them hung a banner—the magazine’s emblem. An open journal, a leaf torn free, shaped like a bird in flight.
Something nagged at Lucy.
*”Excuse me,”* she asked a passing guest. *”What’s the meaning of the logo?”*
*”That’s the gull—the symbol of the magazine. Didn’t you know? The founder’s name is Jonathan Gull. Surely you’ve heard of him? There he is.”*
Lucy turned—and froze.
There stood a silver-haired man in gold-rimmed glasses, commanding the room. The same checkmark—the same *gull*—as in the letter.
This couldn’t be coincidence.
She rushed forward before she lost her nerve.
*”Mr. Gull? I’m Lucy Fairchild.*”My mother was Eleanor Fairchild—you were at her funeral, and I found your letters.”*
