When Rhiannon gives money to a desperate woman with a baby outside a grocery store, she believes it’s a simple act of kindness. But the next morning, she finds the same woman at her late husband’s grave. As their worlds collide, Rhiannon must confront the truth about her husband.
You don’t really expect life to unravel on a Tuesday. It’s the kind of day that carries the weight of nothing special, a pitstop in the week.
But that’s exactly when my life cracked open, on an ordinary Tuesday, arms full of groceries, stepping into a drizzle outside the local store.
A sad woman sitting by a window | Source: Midjourney
That’s when I saw her.
She sat on the curb, cradling a baby wrapped in a faded blue blanket. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes dark wells of exhaustion. But there was something about her stillness, the way she clung to that child as though she might float away, that froze me mid-step.
“Please,” she murmured as I passed, her voice barely rising above the patter of rain. “Anything will help, ma’am.”
A woman sitting with a baby | Source: Midjourney
I never give money to strangers. It’s a rule of mine. I tell myself that it’s all about being practical, not heartless. But that day, her plea rooted me in place. Maybe it was the baby’s little face, round and oblivious, with eyes too big for his tiny frame…
I fumbled for my wallet and handed her $50.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her lips trembling.
A woman holding her wallet | Source: Midjourney
I just hoped that the woman would get that little boy out of the rain and inside somewhere warm. He needed to be dry and safe.
And that was supposed to be it. A kind act, a fleeting moment in my life. But life doesn’t always close chapters so neatly, does it?
A close up of a baby boy | Source: Midjourney
The next morning, I drove to the cemetery to visit my husband’s grave. James had been gone for nearly two years. And while it felt like no time had passed, it also felt like decades had passed.
The car crash had left me hollowed out, but time, cruel and steady, had dulled the sharpest edges of my grief.
Now, I carried it like a phantom limb, always there, faintly aching. I tried as hard as I could to move on from that sense of pain, but nothing could get me to move on.
Flowers on a grave | Source: Midjourney
I would forever be James’ widow.
I liked to visit early, before the world woke up. The quiet suited my need to be alone with him, with my memories of him. But that morning, someone was already there.
Her.
The woman from the parking lot.
A woman and a baby at a cemetery | Source: Midjourney
She stood at James’ grave, her baby balanced on her hip, gathering the fresh lilies I’d planted a while ago. My breath snagged as I watched her slip the stems into a plastic bag.
“What the hell are you doing?” I exclaimed.
The words tore out of me before I could stop them.
She spun around, her eyes wide with alarm. The baby looked startled but didn’t cry.
Lilies growing out of a grave at a cemetery | Source: Midjourney
“I… I can explain,” she stammered.
“You’re stealing flowers. From my husband’s grave. Why?” I demanded.
She blinked at me as if I’d slapped her straight across the face.
“Your husband?”
“Yes!” I snapped. “James. Why are you here?”
A woman at a cemetery | Source: Midjourney
Her face crumpled, and she held the baby tighter, breathing heavily as though she was trying hard not to cry.
“I didn’t know… I didn’t know he was your husband. I didn’t know James was with anyone else…”
The cold air seemed to thicken around us. The baby whimpered.
“What are you talking about? Excuse me? What the hell are you saying?”
Tears welled in her eyes.
An upset woman at a cemetery | Source: Midjourney
“James. James is my baby’s father, ma’am.”
The ground beneath me shifted violently, and I was sure I was going to collapse.
“No,” I choked out. “No, he isn’t. He can’t be. That’s… No!”
Her lips trembled as she nodded.
An upset woman | Source: Midjourney
“I didn’t even get to tell him,” she whispered. “I found out that I was pregnant a week before he disappeared from the face of the earth. I only learned about his death recently. I ran into someone who knew us both, a woman from his office. She’d introduced us. And she told me. I didn’t even know where he was buried until she told me. We live above the supermarket. In a tiny apartment.”
Her words hit me like fists slamming against my body. Each one felt harder than the last. James, my James, had lived a life I knew nothing about.