The Little Girl Who Told a Widower His Dead Wife Was Still Alive
The rain had polished every gravestone in Saint Margaret’s Cemetery until the names shone like words written beneath glass.
Thomas Alder stood beside the grave he had visited on the first Sunday of every month for nearly nine years. In one hand, he held a black umbrella. In the other, he carried a small bundle of lavender tied with white thread.
Lavender had been Rebecca’s favorite.
She used to place it inside drawers, between the pages of books, and beneath her pillow. Even years after she was gone, Thomas sometimes imagined he could smell it in their old house.
He bent down and placed the flowers against the stone.
REBECCA ALDER
BELOVED WIFE
1978–2017
“I repaired the porch,” Thomas said quietly.
Talking to a grave had once felt strange. Now it was as ordinary as making morning coffee.
“The third step was rotten, just like you always said. You were right about that.”
Rain tapped against the umbrella.
“And Mrs. Whitmore’s cat had kittens in my shed. Four of them. One is completely black and keeps climbing into my toolbox.”
He paused.
“You would have kept all four.”
A soft voice came from behind him.
“Is that your wife?”
Thomas turned.
A little girl stood several feet away between two rows of graves. She looked no older than seven. Her yellow raincoat was too large for her, and water dripped from the ends of her dark curls.
She was alone.
Thomas glanced toward the cemetery entrance, expecting to see a parent hurrying after her. The iron gates stood open, but the path beyond them was empty.
“Yes,” he answered. “She was my wife.”
The girl stepped closer.
She studied Rebecca’s name, then looked at Thomas with an expression far too serious for a child.
“My mother has a picture of you.”
Thomas tightened his grip on the umbrella.
“You must be mistaken.”
The girl reached into the pocket of her raincoat.
“I took it from her bedroom.”
She produced a photograph protected inside a clear plastic sleeve.
Thomas accepted it carefully.
For a moment, he did not understand what he was seeing.
The picture showed a younger version of himself standing on a wooden pier. His hair was darker, his shoulders straighter. One arm was wrapped around Rebecca’s waist.
She wore a red scarf and was laughing at something beyond the camera.
Thomas remembered the exact afternoon.
They had been celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary at Lake Briar. A stranger had offered to take their photograph before the two of them boarded a sightseeing boat.
Only one copy had ever been printed.
Thomas had kept it inside Rebecca’s jewelry box until the week of her funeral, when he placed it in her coffin.
His fingers began to shake.
“Where did you get this?”
“In my mother’s room.”
“What is your mother’s name?”
The girl hesitated.
“She calls herself Anna.”
“Calls herself?”
“Sometimes she wakes up and says another name.”
Thomas could hear the rain falling around them, but it seemed very far away.
“What name does she say?”
The girl looked directly into his eyes.
“Rebecca.”
The umbrella slipped from Thomas’s hand.
It struck the wet grass and rolled against the base of the grave.
For nine years, Thomas had lived with the certainty that Rebecca was dead.
Her train had derailed during a winter storm. Several carriages had overturned and caught fire near the Graymoor tunnel. Rebecca’s handbag, coat, wedding ring, and identification had been recovered from the wreckage.
The authorities had told him that some of the bodies could not be visually identified.
A sealed coffin had been delivered three weeks later.
Thomas had touched the polished wood while a priest spoke of eternal rest. He had watched the coffin descend into the earth. He had stood beside the grave until everyone else had gone home.
Now a child was telling him that Rebecca was alive.
Thomas stared at the photograph again.
“This isn’t possible.”
The girl’s lower lip trembled.
“I didn’t come here to upset you.”
“What is your name?”
“Lily.”
“Lily, where is your mother?”
“At home.”
“Does she know you came here?”
The girl shook her head.
“She doesn’t like cemeteries. She cries whenever she sees one.”
Thomas slowly retrieved his umbrella.
His knees felt weak, and his heart beat with such force that it hurt.
“Why did you bring the photograph?”
“Because yesterday she remembered this place.”
Lily pointed toward the old stone chapel beyond the trees.
“She drew the window and the angel above the door. Then she wrote your name on the table with her finger.”
Thomas looked toward the chapel.
Rebecca and Thomas had been married there thirty-two years earlier.