I started bringing crimson roses every Sunday, without fail. Always seven, always wrapped in paper like she liked. But by Tuesday? Gone. Not wilted—gone. No petals, no stems, no trace.

At first, I thought maybe the grounds crew tossed them early. Or maybe animals. But week after week, same thing. Other graves still had weathered lilies and half-dead tulips rotting in their vases. Only hers was bare.

So I bought a little camera. The kind hunters use for deer. I wedged it low in the hedges behind her headstone, pointing right at the marble. I didn’t tell anyone. Just waited.

The first two days, nothing. Then, on the third afternoon, I nearly dropped my coffee watching the footage.

A boy. Maybe eleven. Skinny. Hoodie too big for him. He crept up around 3:30 p.m., looked around, and gently plucked every rose. One by one. He didn’t rip them. He held them like they mattered.

Next day, he came back. Not to take more—just to sit. Cross-legged, facing the stone. He stayed for twenty-three minutes. I counted. He didn’t talk. Just sat there with the roses in his lap.

I zoomed in on the frame. His face looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Until I spotted what was hanging around his neck.

A silver locket. Oval-shaped. Scratched. But I knew that thing. I bought it for Malini on our twentieth anniversary. It had a little engraving on the back. Her initials, and mine, in Tamil script.

My stomach flipped.

It couldn’t be hers. Hers was buried with her. She wore it every day for thirty-two years, even when the clasp broke and I had to fix it with fishing line. I watched them lower her into the ground with it on.

So how did that boy have it?

I paused the video and stared.

Then I grabbed my keys and drove straight to the cemetery.

I sat on the bench across from her grave for hours, like I was waiting for a ghost.

And at 3:34 p.m., there he was.

Same hoodie. Same awkward walk. Thin legs poking out of shorts too small for fall weather. He was carrying something today—looked like a notebook, held tight to his chest.

I didn’t say anything. I just let him approach her grave. He crouched beside it, gently touched the edge of the stone like it was skin. Then he opened the notebook.

He started to read out loud. Softly.

It took me a minute to catch the words. But when I did, my heart punched against my ribs.

He was reading one of my poems.

I hadn’t written a poem in years, not since before Malini got sick. But she had a whole collection in her nightstand. Stuff I scribbled back when I thought I had a shot at being a real writer.

I took a breath and stood up. My knees creaked. The bench had gotten harder with age.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

He startled like a deer. Looked like he might bolt.

“I’m not mad,” I added quickly. “I just… I saw you reading.”

He clutched the notebook tighter. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else came here.”

“You know her?” I nodded toward the grave.

He hesitated. “Sort of.”

That stung. “Sort of?”

“She told me stuff. I mean, I talk to her. I don’t know if she hears me, but… she helps.”

“She?”

He nodded. “The lady in the red dress. She was here the first time I came. She sat on that bench and told me this was a safe place. That I could talk here.”

My knees buckled. I had to sit.

“Red dress?” I asked. “You mean a woman actually talked to you here?”

“Yeah. But only that once. She had a big braid and red bangles. Like the ones in the Bollywood movies.”

That was Malini’s favorite dress. She wore it the last time we danced—at our niece’s wedding. I remembered how she’d spun in it, laughing at how the skirt flared out like a movie star.

But this boy couldn’t have known that.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked.

“Reza,” he said.

“Reza what?”

He hesitated again. “Reza Imtiaz.”

And suddenly it clicked.

Imtiaz.

That was the last name of Malini’s old coworker from the school district. A kind woman who used to visit during Malini’s chemo days, always bringing samosas and soft music playlists. She’d bring her little grandson once in a while—a shy toddler with huge eyes who never talked.

“Your grandmother,” I said. “Mina?”

He nodded slowly.

I let out a breath. Pieces started slotting in.

“You’ve been taking the roses?” I asked.

He looked ashamed. “Only because she said it was okay. The lady in the red dress.”

I stared at him.

“She said they were from someone who loved her very much,” he continued. “She said I could borrow them. That they were meant for someone who needed love.”

And that’s when my throat closed up.

Borrow. Not take. Borrow.

“What do you do with them?” I asked.

“I bring them to the hospital,” he said. “To my mom. She’s been sick. They don’t let me bring too much in, but flowers are allowed if they’re wrapped.”

I had to look away.

This kid wasn’t stealing. He was trying to give someone hope.

We sat in silence for a while.

“Where’s your mom now?” I asked finally.

“Still in recovery. They say she’ll be okay. But it was scary for a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “It helped, talking here. Even when she wasn’t around, I felt like she was listening.”

The wind picked up. A dry leaf skittered across the headstone.

I pulled out my phone and opened my photo album.

“This was her,” I said, showing him a picture of Malini at the beach, hair flying, wide smile.

He smiled. “That’s her. That’s the lady.”

My hands went cold.

He wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be.

“How’d you get the locket?” I asked, my voice thin.

“Oh,” he said. “It was under the bench one day. I thought it was lost, but… I don’t know. It felt like it was for me.”

I didn’t tell him the locket had been buried. Maybe some things don’t need explaining.

Instead, I told him something else.

“She would’ve liked you. She always said kids with quiet hearts grow into people who move mountains.”

He smiled shyly. “She said something like that to me too.”

We made a deal, right there.

Every Sunday, I’d bring two bundles of roses. One for Malini. One for Reza’s mom. Wrapped in the same brown paper, tied with twine.

And every Sunday at 3:30, we’d meet. Sit. Read. Remember.

It became our thing.

By December, his mom was out of the hospital. She came to the cemetery once, walked slow, breathing deep. She thanked me for the flowers, though I didn’t say much. Just nodded and smiled.

One day, Reza brought me a folded paper.

A poem. His own.

It wasn’t fancy. But it was real.

The last lines stuck with me:
“She told me love doesn’t end / It just finds new places to land.”

I cried in my car after he left.

I kept bringing the roses, even after Reza stopped coming regularly. He moved across town. His mom got better. But he wrote me sometimes. And every birthday, he left one rose on Malini’s grave.

I never caught him doing it. But I knew it was him.

And the locket?

I let him keep it.

Some things don’t belong buried.

Some things are meant to be carried forward.

Life doesn’t always give you what you expect. But sometimes, in the strangest corners, it hands you back a piece of what you thought you’d lost.

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