Chapter 5 - THE FUNERAL I NEVER ATTENDED
Maya told me not to trust handwriting alone. Familiarity could point us in a direction, but a court would want more than the certainty of a daughter who had watched her mother sign birthday cards for twenty-seven years. She sent the document to a forensic handwriting examiner and requested the notary’s journal. Then she asked me a question I had spent the entire morning avoiding.
“What exactly were people told about your death?”
I had no answer.
Claire did.
She met me that evening in the back office at Riverside after the nursery closed. Helen stayed long enough to lock the front gate, then left us alone with two paper cups of tea and the low hum of the greenhouse fans. Claire arrived without makeup, still wearing the cream trousers from work. She looked nothing like the poised woman from the memorial-tree aisle. She looked exhausted and furious.
She placed a thick envelope on the desk.
“I went through everything Caleb kept in his old apartment,” she said. “I know I should not have, but after this morning I needed to know what else was real.”
Inside the envelope was an obituary.
My obituary.
It had been printed in a neighborhood paper eight years earlier, small enough that I had never seen it and vague enough to avoid details that might invite investigation. Anastasia Elaine Dunaway, nineteen, had “passed away unexpectedly after a private struggle.” The notice praised my love of gardens, mentioned a private family service, and requested donations to a mental-health nonprofit in lieu of flowers.
My hands went cold as I read it.
They had used my illness even while pretending to erase it.
“They made it sound like I killed myself,” I said.
Claire’s face crumpled. “That is what I was told.”
I looked at her.
She swallowed. “Margaret said you had been ill for years. She said the family tried everything. Caleb never corrected her.”
The nursery seemed to tilt around me.
The story explained too much. Why nobody asked questions about a death certificate. Why my mother could wear grief like a medal. Why Caleb’s silence appeared sensitive rather than suspicious. A private tragedy involving mental illness made people cautious. They did not pry because they thought decency required distance.
Claire handed me another paper: a program from a memorial service at St. Matthew’s Church dated two weeks after the obituary. My photograph at seventeen was printed beneath the words CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF ANASTASIA DUNAWAY.
I stared at the image of my younger self.
On the day my family held my funeral, I had been working an eight-hour shift at Riverside, probably selling mulch to suburban homeowners and eating a turkey sandwich in the break room. I remembered that period vaguely: my mother had claimed Caleb’s girlfriend’s relatives were visiting more often, so she sent me away almost every weekend. I had thought I was being hidden.
In reality, I had been prevented from walking into my own memorial service.
“Who attended?” I asked.
“Dozens of people, according to Caleb. Church friends. Your parents’ friends. Some of his college friends. The Whitmores did not know your family yet.”
“Did Caleb speak?”
Claire looked down.
That was answer enough.
“What did he say?”
“He read a letter.”
My chest tightened.
Claire reached into the envelope again, but this time she hesitated. “I found a copy.”
I almost told her to keep it. Then I held out my hand.
The letter was short. Caleb wrote about a little sister who followed him through sprinklers in summer, stole the marshmallows from his cereal, and once waited outside his bedroom all night when he was sick. He wrote that he wished he had protected me better. He wrote, I hope wherever you are, you finally feel safe.
The words blurred.
I hated him most in that moment because the memories were real.
He had loved me.
And he had buried me anyway.
Claire watched me fold the paper. “He says your mother told him the lie would only be temporary. That the obituary was to explain why you were never around their social circle. Then it became too big to undo.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“I know.”
“He stood in a church and read this.”
“I know.”
“And then came home and saw me in the kitchen.”
Claire said nothing.
A car pulled into the employee lot outside.
I looked through the blinds.
Caleb stepped out.
Claire went rigid. “I did not tell him we were meeting.”
“I did,” Helen said from the doorway behind us.
I turned. She had returned without either of us hearing. Her expression was apologetic but firm. “He was sitting across the street for an hour. I told him he could come in only if you agreed.”
My first instinct was no.
Then I looked at the memorial program in my hand.
“Let him in.”
Caleb entered as though approaching a hospital bed. He had not shaved. His tie was gone, collar open, eyes red from lack of sleep. When he saw the papers on the desk, he stopped.
“Ana.”
I held up the obituary. “When did I die?”
His face twisted. “Please.”
“No. Give me the date. You read a eulogy. You should remember.”
He leaned against a shelf as if he needed it for balance. “April nineteenth.”
I nodded slowly. “Interesting. On April nineteenth, I clocked in at Riverside at eight in the morning. I probably came home that night and ate dinner ten feet from you.”
“I was twenty-three. Mom said—”
“You were an adult.”
“I know.”
“Did you know about the forged trust assignment?”
His eyes snapped toward me. “What?”
Claire looked at him with a new kind of fear.
I slid a copy of the document across the desk.
Caleb read it once, then again. Color drained from his face.
“I never asked for this.”
“But you received money from the trust.”
“My parents said Grandma had structured it that way because of your medical history.”
“Did you ever ask me?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
He lowered himself into the chair opposite me. For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Then Caleb reached into his jacket and placed his phone on the desk.
“There is more,” he said.
I stared at him.
He unlocked the phone and opened an email account I had never seen. “Mom used this address for family financial messages. She told me not to keep anything in my regular inbox because Claire might see it.”
He scrolled to a message from three years earlier.
The subject line read ANA RESOLUTION.
Inside, my mother had written: Once the assignment is notarized, Caleb’s share will be secure. Richard is nervous, but this protects the family from future instability. Ana does not need to know the details. She is happier when she is not burdened.
My father had replied with five words.
Make sure this cannot unravel.
I looked at Caleb.
“Why are you showing me this now?”
His eyes filled with tears. “Because it already unraveled.”
“No. Why now?”
He looked at Claire, then back at me. “Because I spent eight years choosing the easiest version of cowardice. And this morning I finally saw what it cost you.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hug him. I did neither.
Maya had warned me that remorse was not evidence.
The emails were.
I forwarded them to her.
At 9:18 that night, she called back.
“The notary’s journal arrived,” she said. “Your mother signed as a witness to your appearance.”
“But I was never there.”
“I know. And the notary recorded an identification number that does not match your license.”
My throat tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone may have impersonated you.”
I looked through the office window at rows of young trees standing black against the moonlit greenhouse glass.
May you like
My mother had not just erased me.
Someone had stepped into my place.
