“Penny,” he said softly, “look over there.”

I followed his gaze, and my heart stopped. A few yards away stood another headstone, and on it was… my name.

Forever in Our Hearts, Penelope, it read, with a photo of me as a little girl, grinning at the camera like I had the whole world figured out.

“WHAT THE HECK?” I gasped. I looked at the headstone with eyes wide open, thinking this was a nightmare. But when I pinched myself, there was no waking up. This was real. My grave was real.

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and called Mom.

She answered on the first ring.

“Mom,” I began.

“I’m at the cemetery, and there’s… there’s a grave with my name on it. What’s going on?”

There was a pause before Mom’s voice, eerily calm, came through.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come back to see it,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“After your father passed,” she explained, her voice quivering slightly, “I felt like I’d lost both of you. You stopped visiting, stopped calling… I needed something to mourn.”

She paused.

“So, I bought the plot next to your father’s and had the headstone made,” she continued. “It was the only way I could cope.”

How could you do that, Mom? I thought.

I couldn’t believe that my mother had been mourning me, even though I was alive and well. At that point, I didn’t know whether to feel angry or heartbroken.

However, when I thought more about it, something didn’t add up. Why didn’t she mention this during her visits? Why pretend everything was normal?

Then it clicked. The visits, her constant worry about my health, her insistence that I move back home… She wasn’t just grieving. She was preparing for something else.

A chill ran down my spine as I remembered the pills she’d tried to give me for a cold last year. I didn’t think much of it, but now… Could she have been trying to…?

I needed answers.

“Mom, I’ll be over soon,” I said and hung up before she could respond.

Andrew looked at me. I could see how concerned he was.

“Penny, what did she say?” he asked.

“I think she’s lost it, Andrew. We need to go to her house. Now.”

The drive to Mom’s home felt surreal. It was bittersweet because the streets and parks reminded me of the time I spent there with Dad, but they also reminded me that he wasn’t with me anymore.

That he wouldn’t be there to hug me when I entered home.

As we pulled into the driveway, I almost forgot why we were there. Almost. Until I saw my Mom at the doorstep.

“Hi, sweetheart!” she smiled standing at the door as I got out of the car and walked towards her. “How are you?”

She sounded like she was so happy to see me, but her eyes had this strange satisfaction that made me think she had been expecting us all along.