Amelia Harlow
They are all wearing black. I'm still in my pink nightsuit.
But around us, every other person is in white. A sea of pale, ghostly faces, staring in silence. Their eyes move between me and the coffin, as if searching for answers, as if whispering questions they dare not speak. My hands tremble, but no tears fall. I don't cry. I don't scream. I simply sit, rooted to the chair beside the open grave, my eyes fixed on him.
Nathan.
Through the glass of the coffin, I can still see his face. Peaceful, yet heavy with words that never made it past his lips. His eyes had tried to speak last night, just before his body went limp in my lap. They still haunt me—eyes filled with secrets, unfinished confessions, and a silence that suffocates me now.
There is a strange restlessness in the air. An unease that creeps through my skin. As if the earth itself resists this burial, as if even the soil knows something is terribly wrong.
Nathan is about to be lowered into the ground forever. The thought makes my chest tighten, and I clutch the bangles he gave me just yesterday. Two silver circles, each carved with six small green stones that glow faintly in the gray light. "Never take them off," he had told me, smiling with a softness I will never see again. I run my fingers over them, remembering his voice, and my throat burns.
Someone pushed him. From the third floor—or maybe the fourth, maybe even higher. His bones shattered on the marble, his blood staining the floor where we should have begun our life together. On the very night of our wedding, my husband was murdered.
I turn my eyes toward his siblings. Their faces are unreadable, almost stone-like. No tears, no trembling lips, no grief etched into their features. Their blankness unnerves me more than if they had been laughing. I can't decide—are they hiding something, or are they simply empty inside? My eyes trace their features, searching for cracks in their expressions. But all I find is a silence that feels too heavy, too deliberate.
His parents, on the other hand, seem broken. Mrs. Ashford's eyes are swollen and red, her lips trembling as she presses a handkerchief to her face. Mr. Ashford's shoulders are slumped, his strong frame bent like an old tree about to break. They look like grieving parents. But grief can be performed. And in this house, I am beginning to suspect everything.
The gravediggers begin lowering the coffin. The wooden box descends slowly, taking pieces of my heart with it. My eyes blur, and I finally feel the sting of tears. When the coffin hits the bottom, the dull thud echoes through the air, and I flinch as though struck. A cry escapes me, unbidden, raw. For a moment, the world tilts, and I pray this is a nightmare. That I will wake in our bedroom, find Nathan beside me, and laugh at how real the dream felt.
But no. The soil is real. The silence is real. His death is real.
My nightdress from last night is still stained with his blood. I hadn't changed it. Couldn't. It clings to me like a reminder, like a curse.
Suddenly, a hand rests on my shoulder. Warm. Firm.
"You have to be strong, Amelia."
It's Lilith Ashford—Nathan's mother. Her touch feels sincere, but I can't trust anything anymore. Her voice carries weight, yet her eyes… her eyes flicker briefly toward her other children before returning to me. That flicker is enough to plant another seed of doubt inside me.
I glance again at his siblings. Their posture, their whispers, the way they watch each other—it doesn't belong to a funeral. It belongs to a secret. A secret I must uncover.
The first shovel of soil hits the coffin with a hollow sound, and my heart clenches. More follows, faster and faster, until his face disappears from me forever. I whisper his name under my breath. Once, twice, again and again, as if saying it could keep him alive. But the grave swallows him whole, and soon, there is nothing left to see but fresh earth.
Nathan Ashford is gone. Forever. Forever. Forever.
When it is over, the crowd begins to disperse. Dark umbrellas open against the drizzle that has begun to fall. One by one, people drift toward their cars. My body refuses to move. I stay seated, numb, until the sound of a taxi skidding to a stop jolts me.
A yellow cab. Out of place among the sleek black cars of the Ashfords.
My parents step out. My father counts cash into the driver's hand, while my mother scans the crowd with frantic eyes. The sight of them shatters the fragile wall I had built around myself.
I run. Faster than I thought I could. Straight into my mother's arms.
And I break.
The tears I had buried for hours erupt, pouring out with a force I cannot control. I sob against her chest, clutching her as though she is the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. My cries are violent, endless, tearing through the air until my throat burns raw. I weep for twenty minutes, maybe more—I lose count. The world around me dissolves.
Rain begins to fall harder. Cold drops hit my face, mixing with my tears. And in that moment, it feels like the sky itself is crying with me. As if it too saw Nathan's innocent face covered in blood, his eyes full of words he never had the chance to speak.
I cry. The sky cries. And together, we mourn him bitterly.
But beneath my grief, a fire sparks.
Someone took Nathan from me. Someone in this very family. And I will not rest until I find them.