Back home, she sat at the kitchen table, tracing the rim of her mug, replaying faces from the funeral in her mind. Neighbors. Teachers. Sam’s friends, older now. Could it be one of them? Someone trying to honor him quietly? Each possibility made sense until it didn’t.
Then a stranger came to mind. Could it be someone who’d read Sam’s story in the paper years ago, and was perhaps touched by it? The thought made her skin crawl. What if this person she’d never met had decided to share her grief, to claim a piece of it as their own?