CHAPTER 15: What the Coffin Could Not Bury

The final prayer began late.
It sounded different after the letter. Less beautiful, perhaps, but truer. Reverend Alden spoke of dust, mercy, and the courage required to let light into sealed rooms. Eleanor listened with one hand resting on Adrian's coffin and the other holding the folder he had left behind.
Julian and Celeste were escorted out before the hymn. No one called it removal. In families like the Vales, consequence often arrived dressed as courtesy.
When the doors closed behind them, the chapel did not feel peaceful. Peace was too small a word for a mother who had just learned her son died afraid. But the air felt cleaner, as if the room had finally stopped pretending that manners were the same as love.
Eleanor bent close to the coffin.
'I heard you,' she whispered.
Outside, the rain continued. Inside, the white roses kept their place, and the sealed truth began its long work.
Adrian would still be buried. Nothing could save him from that. But what he had written before death would not be buried with him.
His mother would see to it.