The autumn wind whispered through the graveyard, rustling leaves and draping a veil of chill over the mourners. A soft drizzle fell, mingling with the sighs of people wishing the funeral would end quickly.
Everyone — except one.
Clothed in black and rooted like stone, stood Émilie. The mother. Unmoved by the cold or the crowd. Her world had narrowed to the casket before her — the final resting place of her son, Lucas. Her only child. Her everything.
They hadn’t allowed her to see him. «Too disfigured,» they had said. «Better to remember him the way he was.» But Émilie would’ve given anything to hold him one last time, to run her fingers through his hair, to whisper goodbye into his ear.
Next to her stood a woman in mourning — striking and distant — Lucas’s partner. Her glassy eyes were fixed on the gray sky, lips trembling. The guests murmured — so young, so tragic. But Émilie wasn’t listening. She was elsewhere.
She was twenty again, racing to tell Julien she was pregnant — only to find another woman answering his door, draped in his shirt. He had laughed. Émilie hadn’t. She turned and walked away without a word.
Lucas had been born soon after. And from then on, he was her world. She never married. Never even dated. No one ever came before him.
Now, he was gone.
Then… a sound.
A whisper.
A voice.
Her breath caught in her throat. Familiar. Impossible. It was Lucas.
“Mom…”
Her heart thundered as she turned toward the coffin. No one else seemed to hear it. Or perhaps they didn’t believe it. But she did.
She rushed forward, clawing at the casket. Hands tried to restrain her, voices told her to stop, but nothing could stop a mother.
With a force born of grief, she pried it open.
Silence fell.
The casket was… empty.
At the bottom sat only a small, dusty tape recorder.
Playing on loop, over and over:
“Mom… I’m here… Mom… I’m here…”
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Lucas’s partner backed away, pale and shaking. People murmured in disbelief.
But Émilie just stood there.
Staring into the hollow box.
Then, without a word, she stepped back, turned, and walked away into the mist.
She never returned.
No one ever saw Lucas again. No one could explain what had happened. Some claimed it was a sick joke. Others whispered of something more — something unexplainable.
But Émilie? Her heart, shattered moments earlier, now flickered with something unexpected.
A spark. A tremble. A whisper of possibility.
Was he out there?
She didn’t know.
But she believed.
As long as she lived, she would believe.
A mother had buried her son.
And heard his voice calling back.
