They had buried their twin boys three months earlier, or at least that was what the hospital and the paperwork had told them, a neat stack of forms and condolences delivered with sterile efficiency. The deaths had been described as sudden, unavoidable, tragic, and Evan had hated every word because none of them explained anything. He had questioned timelines, signatures, and procedures, but grief had drowned his doubts, and Meredith had been barely standing as it was. He had chosen silence because he thought it was kinder.
The sound that broke through the stillness did not belong in a place like this.
“Sir,” a small voice said, thin but steady, “they are not here.”
Evan lifted his head slowly, the words taking a moment to register. A young girl stood several paces away near a line of bare trees, her feet bare against the cold grass as though she did not feel it at all. Her dress was too large and torn at the hem, her dark hair hanging in tangled strands around a face that looked sharper and older than it should have. There was fear in her eyes, but beneath it was something firmer, a certainty that did not waver.
She pointed toward the headstone.