Three years. For 1,095 days, I’ve sat on this cold bench. The kids don’t come anymore. They have their own lives. They say I need to move on. They don’t get it. This is my promise to Helen. Till death do us part, and even after.

Today, a new groundskeeper, a young kid named Mark, walked up to me. He was wringing his hands. “Excuse me, Mr. Gable,” he said. “I don’t mean to bother you.”

I just nodded, watching the headstone. HELEN GABLE. BELOVED WIFE.

“It’s just… we’re a bit confused,” he said, looking at his clipboard. “We see your car here from 8 AM to 9 AM every day. And we appreciate you keeping the plot so nice. But the other lady, she gets upset.”

I finally turned to look at him. “Other lady?”

He winced. “Yeah, the one who comes in the afternoon. She says this is her mother’s grave. She told my boss she wishes you’d stop leaving your flowers because she doesn’t know what to do with them. She looks just like the picture on the stone, just a bit older. She said her name was…”

The boy, Mark, trailed off, looking deeply uncomfortable. He checked his clipboard again as if the answer might have changed.

My mind went blank for a second. It was like the world had tilted on its axis.

“Her name?” I prompted, my voice sounding hollow and distant to my own ears.

“Clara Gable,” he finally mumbled. “She says she’s Helen Gable’s daughter.”

Clara. The name was a ghost, a whisper from a part of Helen’s life I was never meant to know. But I did know it. Helen had mentioned her daughter, of course, but always in hushed, pained tones. She had a daughter from a life before me. A life she had left behind.

“That’s not possible,” I said, the words feeling like stones in my mouth. “Her daughter lives in Australia. She hasn’t been back in years.”

Mark just shrugged, a helpless gesture from a young man caught in a storm he didn’t understand. “I’m just telling you what she told my boss, sir. She comes by every day around three.”

He gave me an apologetic look and walked away, leaving me alone with the impossible news. I looked back at the headstone, at Helen’s name etched in granite. Our name.

For the rest of the day, my routine was shattered. I couldn’t read the paper. The coffee tasted like ash. My small, quiet house felt like a tomb, filled with the echoes of a life I was suddenly unsure I had even lived.

Every photograph on the mantelpiece screamed at me. There was Helen and me on our trip to the coast, her hair wild in the sea breeze. There we were, laughing in the garden I’d planted just for her. Forty years of memories. Forty years of a shared life.

How could there be another woman? Another story?

My mind, old and tired as it was, replayed Helen’s final years. The sickness had taken her slowly, cruelly. In her lucid moments, did she ever mention a daughter named Clara coming to visit? No. Never.

The doubt was a poison, seeping into the foundations of everything I held sacred. Was I losing my mind? Were the kids right? Was my grief creating phantoms?

But the groundskeeper’s words were too specific. “She looks just like the picture on the stone.”

I had to know. I couldn’t let this phantom tear down the only thing I had left of my Helen.

That afternoon, I drove back to the cemetery. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. The place looked different in the afternoon light, the shadows long and strange.

I parked my car a short distance away, hiding behind a large oak tree that offered a clear view of Helen’s plot. I felt like a spy in my own life.

At ten past three, a modest blue sedan pulled into the lane. A woman got out.

My breath caught in my throat. Mark hadn’t been lying. It was like seeing a ghost. She had Helen’s walk, her posture, the same gentle slope of her shoulders. As she drew closer to the grave, I could see her face. It was Helen’s face, etched with a few more lines of worry and time, but unmistakably hers. The same deep blue eyes, the same determined set of her jaw.

She carried a small bouquet of wildflowers, simple and unadorned. She knelt, carefully removing the pristine white lilies I had left that morning. She didn’t throw them away but placed them gently to the side before setting her own flowers in the small vase.