Simon didn’t run.

  He moved fast, yes—but fast the way you moved when you knew exactly how much noise your body made and how far sound travelled on cold air. The way you moved when you were counting seconds without looking at a watch.

  The graveyard gate complained anyway.

  A thin, whining squeal that made his shoulders tighten reflexively. He paused, hand still on the iron, listening for a response that didn’t come. Somewhere behind him, through stone and glass, voices rose and fell—committee irritation, not alarm. Chairs scraping. Paper shuffling.

  They’ll break soon, he thought. Tea. Toilets. Smoke.

  He stepped through and closed the gate as gently as the metal would allow.

  Skye’s grave was easy to find. It always had been. Fresh stones pulled the eye, and this one still felt fresh to him no matter how many seasons had passed.

  He stopped a few feet away and just looked.

  The stone was dark with damp, letters cut deep enough to hold shadow:

  SKYE HARPER

  Beloved Sister. Beloved Daughter. Beloved Friend.

  The words sat there with a calm that felt almost accusing. Not was. Not remembered as. Just beloved. Present tense, like the stone had never agreed she’d left.

  The grass around it lay wrong only in its rightness—flattened by rain, pressed down evenly, no broken seams, no churn. No place where a heel had slipped. No place where a shovel had bitten and been disguised badly by hands in a hurry.

  Untouched.

  His chest tightened painfully.

  He dropped into a crouch and pressed his fingers into the turf anyway, because he needed to feel resistance. Cold water soaked through immediately, numbing skin. The grass clung, resilient, rooted. Alive.

  A memory cut through him without warning: Skye at seven, flat on her stomach in the back garden, elbows muddy, explaining with total seriousness why worms were useful actually and shouldn’t be moved. He’d listened. He always listened. He just hadn’t always... acted.

  He stood abruptly and drove the spade down.

  The blade hit sod with a dull thud. He leaned his weight into it, levering up earth that came free in heavy, dark slabs. The smell rose immediately—wet, mineral, old. He worked faster than was sensible, breath loud in his ears, muscles burning as he dug and threw, dug and threw, the rhythm pushing thought aside.

  Someone could walk past.

  Someone would.

  He knew that. And he dug anyway.

  He didn’t stop.

  Rain had done him no favours. The soil clung to itself, resisting, as if the ground had decided it didn’t owe him cooperation. His boots slid once near the edge and his heart kicked hard enough to make him swear under his breath.

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  He dug anyway.

  The first scrape of metal on wood sent a shock up his arms.

  He froze, spade half-raised, listening again. The world held. No footsteps. No voices. Just the faint murmur of the meeting beyond the wall and the distant rush of a car on wet road.

  Simon dropped to his knees and cleared soil with his hands, rough and impatient now. Mud smeared his sleeves, packed under his nails. Worms recoiled from sudden light.

  The coffin lid emerged swollen and dark, wood grain blurred by years of water and pressure. The earth around it had settled hard, sealing rain in rather than letting it drain. Soil slid off in sheets.

  He stared at it, heart hammering.

  If she’s here—

  He shut that thought down hard.

  He braced one hand on the edge and leaned over.

  The lid was slick under his palm, cold in a way that didn’t belong to air. He swallowed, throat locking, then hooked his fingers under the edge and pulled.

  The seal broke with a wet, reluctant sound that turned his stomach.

  Water.

  Not dampness. Not puddled corners. The coffin was filled nearly to the lip, rainwater dark and trembling, reflecting a warped slice of grey sky.

  Simon stared down at it, breath coming shallow and sharp.

  “No,” he whispered, and didn’t know who he was arguing with.

  He plunged his hand in.

  Cold knifed up his arm. He forced himself to move slower than panic wanted, fingers sweeping carefully through submerged space—searching for solidity, for the undeniable shape of bone.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Fabric drifted against his wrist, ballooned and heavy. The pale dress. The cardigan, undone by water. His chest seized.

  He reached again and his fingers struck something light, unnatural. Plastic skimmed the surface just long enough to recognise before sinking again.

  Linda’s hospital badge.

  Her name warped. Her smile a ghost.

  It slipped from his grip and sank.

  His gift was there too—the small metal charm he’d placed near her shoulder like it could tether her to the world. Everything was present except the one thing that should have been unavoidable.

  There was no body.

  The absence hit harder than any sight could have. Not horror. Not relief.

  Nothing that could be held. Nothing that could be proved.

  Simon gripped the coffin edge until his hands cramped. His breathing broke into something close to laughter, close to a sob, close to fury.

  Someone had taken her. Or something had. And the ground wasn’t going to tell him which.

  He hauled himself out of the grave, boots slipping in mud, and stood there shaking, chest heaving. He looked at his hands—black with soil, knuckles raw—and a sudden, overwhelming rage surged through him.

  He turned and drove the spade into the nearest tree.

  The metal rang sharp and loud.

  Bark split.

  He wrenched it free and stopped.

  Each strike was an accusation: at the ground, at the sky, at himself. At every moment he’d thought later was a safe place to put truth.

  “Damn it,” he rasped, voice breaking on the word.

  “Simon?”

  The sound snapped him upright.

  He turned.

  Mr Clarke stood a few metres away on the path, frozen mid-step, shopping bag hanging forgotten at his side. His face had gone bloodless, eyes fixed not on Simon, but past him.

  On the open grave.

  On the coffin.

  On the water-filled absence where a child should have been.

  The moment stretched, awful and fragile.

  Mr Clarke’s mouth worked. “I—” He stopped. Swallowed. His gaze flicked from the stone—Beloved Sister. Beloved Daughter. Beloved Friend.—to the empty coffin, to Simon’s mud-smeared hands.

  Confusion gave way to something worse—recognition trying to form and failing to stay contained.

  The girl in the shop.

  The same age.

  The same scar.

  “Lindsey,” he whispered, and the word came out wrong. Then, hoarse: “Skye.”

  Simon took one step forward without thinking. “You shouldn’t—”

  Mr Clarke staggered back like the ground had shifted. Fear—not of Simon, but of the world—flooded his expression.

  “She’s—” His breath hitched. “That girl—she’s alive.”

  A shout of laughter drifted faintly from the church hall, oblivious and obscene.

  Mr Clarke shook his head hard, like he could dislodge the image. “No,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “No, that’s not—”

  Then he turned and ran.

  Not fast. Not graceful. Just away—boots slipping on wet stone, bag swinging wildly, a man fleeing a truth his brain couldn’t keep and his mouth couldn’t contain.

  Simon stood there, chest burning, watching the space he’d left behind.

  The risk crystallised fully now, sharp and undeniable.

  He looked down once more into the grave.

  Empty.

  He didn’t close it.

  Instead, he stepped back, wiped his hands uselessly on his trousers, and turned toward the church.

  Mud clung to him. Water dripped from his sleeves. The spade felt heavier than before, not with effort but with meaning.

  He walked back through the gate with surrender in his posture—not to answers, not to peace, but to the knowledge that whatever had given his daughter back did not obey fences, stones, or the careful lies people told themselves to survive.

  And this time, the ground had stayed still—but the world had not.