The Groundskeeper Pressed a Mud-Caked Locket Into My Palm at My Father's Funeral — Inside Was the Face of the Man Who Killed Him

The coffin was still being lowered when the groundskeeper's mud-caked gloves pressed a polished locket into my palm. Polished clean. That was the first wrong thing.

"Something you should see, Miss Maya," he said, and was gone before I could ask a single question.

I knew the locket. It was my mother's. It had hung around her neck my whole childhood. She was buried with it. At least, that's what my father always told me.

At the graveside, with the wind carrying the scent of apples and damp earth, my thumb pried the clasp open. My heart was already breaking. It broke differently a second later.

The photo inside was water-damaged and curled at the edges. But clear enough.

It showed a man kneeling by the front wheel of my father's truck. A wrench in his hand. A gas station receipt visible on the ground behind him, the date stamped on it — the night before the accident. The man's face was half-turned toward the camera. Smiling slightly. Confident.