Michael stood by the fresh grave, unable to bring himself to leave. Nearby, a car waited for him, and inside it sat his chilled and tearful wife, Pauline, her eyes red from crying.
But the man wasn’t pitying himself or her at that moment. The most precious and beloved person in their lives was gone. Just two days ago, the body of the couple’s youngest son, Edward, had been brought back—Edward, who had left for the capital to study just this past fall.
For three days, Michael and his eldest son, Paul, had been trying to make sense of it all. How could this have happened? Why would a young, intelligent, popular boy end his life by suicide? What had driven him to step over the windowsill of an eighth-floor apartment? Edward knew he wouldn’t survive. He had taken that step toward oblivion on his own. From a life filled with love and comfort to the darkness and emptiness of the grave.
* * *
Interviews with friends, acquaintances, and classmates yielded nothing. Everyone insisted unanimously: his behavior hadn’t changed recently. Just like six months ago, the boy was cheerful and outgoing. He had been dating Christine, a girl from his university group.
There were no major arguments or even minor disagreements between them. School came easily to the small-town high school medalist, and he never lacked for money.
Edward’s girlfriend could recall only one troubling incident. One night, he woke up drenched in sweat and tears. He said he’d seen a woman in mourning clothes leading a little boy by the hand. As the pair approached him, the woman handed the child’s hand to him. When Edward touched the small palm, he realized it was ice-cold. He tried to let go, but the hand wouldn’t release his. The fear triggered hysterical sobs, and he woke up.
Investigators found no other troubles in the boy’s life. There was no apparent reason for a teenager to take his own life. Especially since his mother had spoken to him on the phone just an hour before the police called. The boy had talked about his plans for the evening. There was no trace of sadness, confusion, or indifference to his own life. It was an ordinary conversation, one of hundreds of thousands since he’d left for college.
* * *
Michael and Pauline had raised two boys to adulthood, confident in their future well-being. Their eldest son, Paul, had married a year ago, moving out of a small city apartment into a new suburban house bought by his parents, while the one-bedroom apartment and an old foreign car were transferred to Edward. As the saying goes, live and be happy. But things turned out the opposite.
Michael always thought crows should be circling a cemetery—birds of grief, ruin, desolation, and death. But there wasn’t a crow in sight. About a thousand feet away, a forest of evergreen pines stood, and through the gray clouds, the stingy winter sun peeked out. If not for the graves surrounding him, he might have felt a sense of joy. Clear days are so rare in winter, and he and his wife had learned to appreciate fate’s sudden, even small, gifts.
The autopsy revealed psychotropic substances in the boy’s blood. Apparently, he’d needed “helpers” for that final step off the edge. Upon learning this, Michael held back a sigh of relief. His son, at least, hadn’t killed himself in a clear state of mind. The family decided immediately to keep this from everyone. The town was small, full of envious and spiteful people.
Rumors would spread instantly—tales of a supposed drug-fueled life in the big city, of permissiveness born from money, of careless parents handing their sons limitless sums without oversight. But nothing like that had ever happened. Edward always told his mother where and how much he spent. Michael’s recent busyness had forced him to hand over the reins of watching over their youngest heir to Pauline.
Before that, from birth to the end of high school, Michael had been in charge of the boy’s upbringing. Their second child had filled the man’s heart completely from the moment he was born. First steps, school, graduation—eighteen years flew by in a blur of business and family concerns. One never interfered with the other, as it had in the early days of his career. Edward received all of his father’s love and attention without reserve.
Parental attachment to both children should be equal. Everyone agrees in theory, but practice shows otherwise. The younger ones are always loved more, pitied more, punished more gently, and almost never spanked like the older ones. This was true in Michael and Pauline’s family as well. Perhaps the illness of their second son played a role. Until the age of six, he was on a medical watchlist for a suspected heart defect.
Naturally, they took him to all the renowned cardiology centers in the country. Doctors listened with stethoscopes, studied cardiograms, and examined his condition in every possible way. The worries proved unfounded. Growth and medical treatment bore fruit. Edward’s heart wall strengthened, and the boy began to grow at double the pace. But the love, intensified by fear of loss and pity, never faded.
* * *
Looking at the mound of earth hidden behind a pile of wreaths, Michael began to reflect on his life, searching for the cause of the tragedy. What had his son paid for? What sin lay at the root of the all-consuming grief that had struck him and his wife? Why, instead of a seat on the bus that always brought Edward home, had the boy taken a plot of land in the town cemetery?
Like any young man, Michael had started life as a master of the world. At times, he stepped over others, fired lazy employees, and disciplined for rule-breaking and idleness. Opening pharmacies had required a hefty bribe. But no graver sins followed him. Thank God, the rough ways of the ‘90s, rampant across the country, had bypassed their remote town. Competitors were alive and well, and some even became friends over time.
Only one incident troubled his soul. It happened in the summer before his final year of high school. A group of classmates, including Michael, took some girls from a dance and drove to a lake. As usual, they brought drinks and snacks.
The girls resisted at first but then joined the fun willingly. In the morning, Michael found himself lying next to Helen.
The classmate had never even appealed to him. Why he’d suddenly sought adventure, the boy didn’t know. Perhaps the alcohol was to blame, awakening base instincts. Looking around, Michael found his jeans hanging on a tree. He dressed quickly and left the ill-fated clearing before Helen woke up. For days, he considered going to the girl to explain, but he never mustered the courage.
Over the last two months of summer, his conscience fell silent.
The boys kept having fun, driving to nearby villages for dances. On one such trip, Michael met Pauline and was smitten. Love sparked instantly, mutually, and seriously. There was no need to court or win her over. The girl didn’t hide her readiness to give herself to her beloved, heart and soul. At the end of their final school year, his parents sent matchmakers to her family.
The wedding was modest, a student affair. Their dorms were close, and they saw each other daily. Even then, Pauline knew about contraception and took birth control pills. Thanks to this, the couple finished college successfully and returned to their hometown. Michael heard little about Helen, and it didn’t interest him. They hadn’t studied together in their final year. Rumors said she’d moved to another city to finish school and attend prep courses.
Truth be told, Michael breathed a sigh of relief then. Though rare, memories of that summer night haunted him. Still just a boy, he couldn’t imagine facing his classmate on September 1. What would he say? How would he act in her presence? The thought alone made shame flush his cheeks, just beginning to sprout youthful stubble. But fate spared him the torment. Helen left, and thank God for that.
* * *
Armed with knowledge and experience from the city, Michael and Pauline started a business in their hometown. First, they opened one store, then a second. They borrowed money from friends and acquaintances, paid it back, and borrowed again. Eventually, the shops turned a profit.
The couple’s life was happy in every way. Michael genuinely loved and valued his wife, and she reciprocated. Only rarely, a few times in their thirty years together, did he wake in fear for his family. He dreamed of that summer night. A full moon shone, his heart pounded in his head. Michael knew he wasn’t kissing Pauline but couldn’t stop. He buried his face deeper in hair scented with delicate perfume and continued.
The birth of their first child, Paul, found the family in his old parental home, but a larger apartment awaited nearby. All that remained was to finish the bathroom renovation and install a new front door. Michael was on his way to buy that door at a hardware store when he ran into Helen. She wore a black headscarf, her face streaked with tears. He assumed someone close to her had died.
He couldn’t just pass by, and the former classmates spoke:
— Hello, Helen. Has someone passed away?
— Hello, Michael. Yes, I lost my son a week ago.
— My condolences. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even know you’d married. But I’m glad you have a loving man by your side in such grief.
— Yes, — Helen said, wiping a tear from the tip of her nose, then walked away.
The chance encounter unsettled Michael. He asked classmates and learned Helen had indeed been a mother to a wonderful boy. He was seven at the time of his death. Brain cancer had taken his life. Late diagnosis and the disease’s rapid progression hastened the end. Her grief knew no bounds. People said she only left the cemetery to sleep at home.
Michael felt for Helen then. The thought that the child might have been his never crossed his mind. In his view, one night couldn’t have led to pregnancy. And if it had, she would’ve told him. In short, he calmed himself quickly and for a long time. The move that followed and the whirl of business left no room for pointless reflection.
* * *
Reviewing all possible sins against others, aged ten years by immense grief, Michael fixated on the incident with Helen. His heart suddenly ached, and a realization long buried dawned on him—the father of his classmate’s deceased boy was none other than himself.
Forcing himself to leave the grave that now felt dear, he resolved to find the woman who’d given him her virginity. To ask if her curses had caused the death of his and his wife’s boy.
Helen’s mother still lived in the same apartment as years ago. Little changed drastically in the town. People grew attached to their home’s walls, working the same jobs for decades. Learning her daughter’s address from the woman, Michael drove there instead of attending his son’s memorial at the central café. Anxiety made driving difficult; beads of sweat rolled onto his silk tie despite the cold outside. He reached the address in two hours.
The door opened almost immediately after his knock, as if the woman had been standing by, awaiting the signal. Past grief had aged but not disfigured Helen. Her features still hinted at the girl Michael had passionately kissed on that intoxicating summer night and forgotten as quickly as she’d left the town.
With difficulty and long pauses, a heavy dialogue began between two parents who’d known loss.
The woman spoke first:
— I expected you, Michael. My mom told me what happened to your son. But I didn’t hope to meet you today, on the day of his funeral.
— Yes, I didn’t anticipate this trip either, but I couldn’t live without clearing things up. It was hard to face my guilt toward you. Back then, twenty-five years ago, was that my son who died?
The woman looked at him, eyes brimming with tears, then shifted her gaze to the curtain covering the living room window. A couple of breaths steadied her. Her hands, resting on her skirt, trembled slightly. When she spoke next, her voice was thick with regret:
— Yes, you guessed right. Steven was my most precious and beloved son, and I bore him from you. After that night, I was ashamed until I learned I was pregnant. Then the role of a single mother consumed me; I wanted a child from the man I loved. I knew you were indifferent to me, harbored no illusions of marriage. I wanted to give all my heart to the baby.
I decided never to tell you about Steven. The move helped. No one figured out who the father was or when I got pregnant. The birth went well, and we lived as a small, happy family. That cursed illness and swift loss clouded my mind. I prayed to God for retribution against you, asked Him to take the most beloved, precious thing, without which life would be hell. It took God so many years to answer my prayers…
— What does this have to do with me? How am I to blame, and why am I paying for your sorrows, Helen?
— You’re right. In the first year after my son’s death, I was beside myself, did many foolish things. I prayed for things I shouldn’t even think about. Now I see that and regret it. Of course, I heard about the birth of your child back then. It felt like you and your wife stole my happiness. All these years, I tried to pray those wishes back, but it didn’t help. I’m so sorry, Michael. Forgive me, the fool.
Furious from the conversation, the man rushed out to the landing without his coat. He jumped into the car and drove back home to his wife, his other son, his daughter-in-law, and his own life. The anger subsided, giving way to tears of despair, but Michael could change nothing. Now he saw the consequences of what he’d heard and never believed: a mother’s prayers always reach the ears of the Almighty.
Deep inside, the man acknowledged his own guilt. Perhaps he should’ve met the girl before she left, talked heart to heart. Not abandoned her so callously, but tried to end things amicably. But what’s done can’t be undone. His son had paid in full for his father’s youthful mistake.
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