For a moment I couldn’t breathe.
The photograph trembled in my hands.
Daniel was standing beside the boy, his arm resting comfortably on the teenager’s shoulder like they had known each other for years. Both of them were smiling at the camera.
Not the polite kind of smile you give strangers.
The relaxed kind.
The kind people share when they belong together.
My throat tightened.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
The boy shifted uncomfortably.
“He gave it to me,” he said quietly.
My mind raced.
Twenty-eight years of marriage. Twenty-eight years believing I knew every corner of my husband’s life.
And yet here stood a boy I had never seen before, holding a picture that suggested something I couldn’t even begin to understand.
“Who are you?” I asked again, more firmly this time.
“My name is Adam.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But the weight in his voice did.
For a moment we just stood there in the quiet funeral hall. Around us, people were speaking in low voices, hugging, wiping tears. But the world felt strangely distant.
Adam glanced toward Daniel’s casket, then back at me.
“He told me to come here,” he said softly. “If something ever happened to him.”
My chest tightened.
