The Love I Buried With My Grandma Chapter 10

The Love I Buried With My Grandma Chapter 10

He suddenly threw himself down the stairwell, shouting.

“Nora, I know you hate me but you don’t have to try to kill me over it!”

His voice drew a crowd. Someone started filming.

I frowned. “Careful what you say!”

“You fell on your own-I never touched you!”

Daniel wouldn’t back down. He started a live stream on the spot.

He was a well-known artist. He had followers.

“Everyone, I know there’s been talk about me online lately. I’m not denying my mistakes.”

“But I’ve worked so hard to make things right, to earn my victim’s forgiveness.”

He turned the camera toward me.

“But I never expected-not only does she refuse to forgive me, she just shoved me down a flight of stairs, trying to kill me!”

Comments were already piling up, tearing into me.

I looked at him and suddenly realized-he and Chloe really were cut from the same shameless cloth.

“You’re sure it was me who pushed you? Got proof?”

“These injuries are the proof! You think I fell down a flight of stairs on my own?”

Daniel’s leg was twisted at an odd angle beneath him.

“Nora, agree to line up an investor for me and we’ll call it even. Otherwise I’ll make sure you land in jail!”

I had to give Daniel credit for sheer nerve.

Too bad he’d miscalculated.

“There’s security footage.”

“That’s impossible, I clearly-”

He caught himself, but everyone had already heard enough.

I let a smirk pull at my mouth.

“Or how about this-I’ll call the police for you. Let’s see what they say.”

Daniel di agged his broken leg away, thoroughly humiliated.

Mure time passed.

I heard Daniel landed an yestor-a wealthy woman in her fifties.

Half a year after that, I heard he couldn’t handle it and ran.

He left the studio behind too.

I heard all of it and said nothing.

I just bought more magnolias and a toy and went back to the cemetery.

This time I sat there a long while.

I had so much I wanted to say, and no idea how to start saying it.

I took out a cloth and slowly wiped the headstone clean.

And somewhere in the wiping, tears started falling onto the stone.

Days kept passing.

Then I noticed the cemetery had a new groundskeeper-Daniel.

I pretended not to see him.

Until today, when I ran into him head-on at the grave.

“Nora.”

“Something you need?”

“I came here to tend the graves.”

“I know.”

“I know I was wrong. I know you’ll never forgive me. Some nights I still see Grandma’s face, and the child

who never got born.”

I looked up at him.

Daniel stared at the two headstones, his eyes full of a regret that would never fully dissolve.

“I don’t want anything else. I just want to make things right.”

I let my mouth curl slightly.

“Is that so?”

“I thought you’d run out of places to hide, and this was just the last one left where you could sleep at night.”

Every drup of color drained from Daniel’s face.

I knew, then, that I’d guessed correctly.

Daniel had split from his wealthy investor, and the money hadn’t been split evenly.

He’d run before he could deliver the paintings he owed her, and his studio had been seized as collateral for

the debt.

Now he wasn’t just blacklisted across the industry-he owed money he couldn’t pay.

This cemetery was nothing but a hideout.

So he wasn’t here to atone.

He was here to hide from his debts, to numb himself, hoping that somehow, in the dead of night, he might

finally sleep in peace.

He wasn’t sincere. Not even now.

But it didn’t matter anymore.

A once-celebrated painter, stripped of his dignity and the brush he used to be so proud of-

That was worse than killing him.

“Just kidding.”

I set down the flowers and toy I’d brought, tossing his aside once more.

“Hope you enjoy your time here. Keeping the graves.”

I didn’t spare a glance at him, I turned and walked away.

The sunlight was clear and bright, falling through the trees, casting a shifting mosaic of shade across the ground-almost beautiful.

Let Daniel stay here forever, jolted awake every midnight, never finding peace.

THE END