The rain that morning was relentless — cold, steady, and cruelly fitting. It felt as if the sky itself was mourning her. My mother’s funeral was small and somber, a scattering of umbrellas over a sea of gray. The sound of wet earth hitting the coffin was rhythmic, final. I stood there, numb, my heart hollowed out.
And then there was the absence — his absence. My father. He wasn’t there.
He was in Hawaii. With his mistress.
I’d seen the pictures — him smiling in the sun, his wedding ring glinting as he held a glass of champagne. The same ring he refused to wear in the hospital when my mother begged him not to leave her alone.
That night, grief turned to something darker — anger, maybe hatred. I sat alone in my apartment, scrolling through old photos of Mom, her laughter frozen in time. Lightning flickered across the Portland skyline, and then — my phone buzzed.
MOM.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The name on the screen felt like a hallucination. I opened the message, and my stomach dropped.
“I’m not dead. Come to the cemetery. Now.”
I told myself it was a cruel prank. Someone had cloned her number, hacked my phone, anything but what it looked like. But deep down, some part of me — the desperate part — whispered, What if it’s her?
Minutes later, I was behind the wheel, driving through the storm. My wipers fought the rain, but the road blurred beneath the torrent. By the time I reached the cemetery, it was nearly midnight.
The fog clung low, thick as breath. My headlights caught something — a figure, small and still, standing near the willow trees. I stepped out, clutching my phone like a weapon.
“Mom?” I whispered.
The figure turned. A pale face. Eyes I knew.
“It’s me, sweetheart,” she said softly. “But you can’t tell anyone I’m alive.”
Read Part 2The Text From the Dead