Funerals make time feel heavy. Clouds hung low over Maple Hill Cemetery, the kind that look like they’re holding their breath. Black umbrellas dotted the hill. My mother squeezed my sleeve; my father stared straight ahead. Somewhere down the row, a pastor spoke Uncle David’s name.
Milo leaned against my leg, warm and restless. He’s a golden retriever with too much heart and not enough patience. Every time the wind rattled the fake flowers, he flicked an ear and gave a soft warning woof, like he was trying to shush the sky.
I lasted through the hymn and half the eulogy. Then the words started swimming, and I could feel every eye in the circle. I whispered that I needed air. My mother nodded, grateful to let me go.
We stepped back. The grass was wet and slick. Gravel crunched under my dress shoes. I told Milo, “Heel.” He did, for exactly three seconds.
Something rustled beyond the pines. He snapped to attention, muscles tight, tail low. Then—yank. My fingers slipped on the leash, and Milo tore off between the stones.
“Milo!” I hissed. “Come!”
No use. I ran.
The familiar rows gave way to a corner of the cemetery I had never visited. Older stones leaned like tired teeth. Names were worn to soft ghosts. The air felt colder here, and the wind moved in careful, whispering lines. Milo zigzagged through a thin iron gate and stopped dead, staring.
“What is it, buddy?” My voice sounded wrong in the quiet.
He didn’t bark. He didn’t whine. He just planted himself like a furry statue and fixed on one spot ahead.
I followed his stare.
A new headstone stood by itself, clean granite among the lichen and tilt. Fresh turned earth ringed its base. The letters were sharp, deep, perfect.
AVERY COLE
That is my name.
Below the name, a date.
It wasn’t Uncle David’s date. It wasn’t any date I knew by heart.
It was today.
My breath snapped short. For a second I thought I’d misread it—maybe it was a trick of light, a smudge, wet granite, anything but the truth my brain refused to accept.
I stepped closer. The numbers were exact. Month. Day. Year. Today.
Milo shifted, pressing his shoulder to my knee, as if he could push me backward with just weight and warmth. I put my palm on his head, then reached out and touched the stone.
Cold. Not the normal kind. Deeper than ice. Like touching the inside of a freezer with the power out.
“Hello?” I said without meaning to. There was no one to answer. Only the wind, and the sound a flag makes when it tries not to flap.
A thorny branch scratched my sleeve. A small gray ribbon lay tangled at the base of the stone, tied in a neat bow. It didn’t belong to flowers, or a wreath. It looked like the bow you put on a gift.
My throat went dry. “This isn’t funny.”
Footsteps on gravel. My father appeared first, then my mother, both moving fast. Funerals have a way of making people run without looking like they’re running.
“Avery?” Dad called. “Why did you—what are you doing over—”
Then he saw where I was looking.
“Whose stone is that?” Mom asked. She sounded careful, like she was trying a thin sheet of ice with the tip of her boot.
I stepped aside. “Mine.”
They came forward. My father squinted at the face of the granite, jaw working. My mother leaned in.
They both frowned in the same puzzled way our family does when we can’t find our glasses and they’re on our heads.
“I don’t see anything,” Dad said.
“What?”
“It’s blank,” Mom said softly. “Just a marker they haven’t carved yet.”
I stared at the letters—my letters. They were still there. My name. The date. Deep as a cut. I could slide my fingertip into the groove of the Y.
“You don’t see it?” I whispered.
Milo’s fur lifted along his spine. A low rumble built in his chest, the kind he saves for thunder and delivery trucks. He wasn’t looking at my parents. He was looking at the stone.
I took my hand away. The cold came with me, a slice of winter in my palm.
“Okay,” Dad said, gentle but firm. “Come back to the service. We shouldn’t be here, Ave.”
“It has my name on it,” I said. “And today’s date.”
He studied my face, not the stone. “Grief does strange things. We’ll talk at home.”
“I’m not imagining this.”
My mother reached for Milo’s leash. “Please,” she said. “Just… please.”
The wind shifted. For a breath, it smelled like cut grass and church coffee. Then the air dipped colder again, and I felt something under the tip of my shoe. I looked down.
The ribbon had moved. The neat bow now lay across the date, covering it like a bandage.
I didn’t kick it or drag it; I hadn’t touched it. The ribbon was simply there a second time, in a different place, doing a different job.
“Stop.” The word came out too loud. “Just—stop.”
My parents blinked. I could see in the angle of their bodies that they heard the fear in mine.
Dad took my elbow. “Come on.”
I should have gone. I should have let him steer me back to prayer and soft voices and paper programs with dates that made sense. But the stone held me. Not just my name. The size of it. The shape of it. The fact that it was new, in an old row, waiting where I would never have walked if Milo hadn’t run.
Why did Milo run?
I glanced at him. He was not looking at me now. He was staring past the stone, ears pricked toward the trees beyond, as if someone stood there just out of sight.
“Who’s there?” Dad called. It was the reflex of a man who checks the locks twice.
No answer. Only the tick of something cooling and the soft, wet sound of dirt settling.
A drop of water slid from the edge of the granite. Not rain. The sky wasn’t falling. It moved like a tear.
I swallowed hard. “If this is a prank, it’s sick.”
My mother did that soft, scared laugh people do when the light goes out during a storm. “Funeral homes don’t prank,” she said. “Honey, please.”
I looked back at the letters. For a blink, the numbers seemed darker—like someone had traced the date with a damp finger. The granite around the engraving looked a little wet, like writing on a fogged mirror.
Today. Today. Today.
Milo pressed closer, so close his collar tag tapped the stone. The tag flashed and settled. I turned the ribbon with my shoe, just enough to see the date again. Still there. Still mine.
I felt a question rise in me that I couldn’t say out loud: If a stone says you die today, when does “today” start?
“Now,” a voice said.
I spun. My parents didn’t move. They hadn’t heard it. Their faces were their funeral faces again. Patient. Tired. Ready to shepherd me away.
“Please,” Dad said. “Avery.”
We started back, slow steps over the damp ground. At the edge of the iron gate, I made myself look over my shoulder one last time.
From where I stood, the stone looked bare and plain and no different than any other.
But I knew what I had seen. I knew what my skin remembered. And my name—my full name—still pulsed under my ribs like I had swallowed a bell.
At the hilltop, the pastor’s voice rose again, steady and kind. The clouds dipped darker. The first drop of real rain hit my cheek.
Behind me, down among the older graves, Milo gave one long, low growl, almost a word, and the hairs on my arms lifted.
We rejoined the family circle. My mother took my hand. Dad shifted his umbrella so it covered all three of us. The pastor finished the prayer. People sniffled. A shovel struck earth.
“Are you okay?” Mom whispered.
No. But I nodded anyway.
The wind rolled across the grass in a long, even breath. I tried not to look back. I tried to count the names on the program instead.
A drop hit the paper and spread. The ink bled one letter, then another, until a line shook into focus—my name—printed where Uncle David’s should have been.
I blinked hard. When I looked again, the letters were normal. Neat. Correct. The kind you can hold in your head and say at a family dinner without your voice cracking.
The pastor said amen. People echoed him. The umbrellas tilted and drifted apart like dark, careful jellyfish.
As we turned to leave, a groundskeeper in a green jacket passed us, pushing a wheelbarrow of tools. He nodded, polite, eyes down. One handle brushed my sleeve. For a second, the toolbox lid bounced, and I saw inside.
A metal stencil lay on top. Letters punched out. A, V, E, R, Y. Under it, a fresh tin of stone paint. And on the rim—wet gray.
He didn’t notice me looking. He just kept walking.
Milo tugged once, toward the old row. The leash hummed in my hand.
I didn’t go back. I didn’t have to.
I already knew exactly where my stone was.
