The child wept desperately by his mother’s grave, insisting she was still aliveno one paid attention until the police stepped in.
In early May, people began noticing a boy visiting the cemetery.
He was around ten, no older. Day after day, he went to the same tombstone.
Hed sit on the ground, leaning against the cold stone, and cry out to the sky:
“Shes still alive! Shes not here!”
Visitors watched with pity, assuming he was grieving deeply.
He couldnt accept losing his mother. In time, they thought, hed come to terms with it.
Yet weeks passed, and the boy kept coming, rain or shine.
The caretaker couldnt take the daily cries anymore. Finally, he called the police.
A young officer arrived and approached the boy cautiously.
“Hey,” he said gently.
The boy flinched, looked uphis face gaunt, tear-streaked, eyes far older than his years.
“Do you know how to tell if someones breathing underground?” he asked.
The officer was stunned.
“No thats not something a child should think about.”
“They said my mom fell asleep driving. But she was never tired. *Never!*” the boy whispered. “And they didnt let me say goodbye”
The officer studied the gravethe dirt was fresh, unsettled. Nearby lay a shovel.
“Who told you that?”
“The people she worked for. A man with a gold ring and a woman whos always smiling, even when angry.”
“You know their names?”
The boy said them, and the officer wrote them down. Something in his voice stuck with the policeman, who reported it.
An investigation began. They discovered the boys mother, Anna, was an accountant at a major pharmaceutical company.
A week before her “accident,” shed vanished from work.
Her employer claimed she was exhausted, then dead. The death certificate was signed by the company doctor.
No wake, a closed casket, no autopsy.
The officer demanded an exhumation. The coffin was empty.
The case went federal. More details surfaced: Anna wasnt just an accountant.
Shed gathered proof against the companydocuments, recordings, illegal money schemes.
She planned to take it to prosecutors, but someone found out.
Then came something even the boy didnt know.
Anna hadnt crashed. Her death was staged by police.
The day she brought the evidence in, they already had files linking the company to other crimes.
They acted fast: Anna entered witness protection.
To keep executives from suspecting a leak, they faked her death. The coffin was always empty.
All evidence went to court, but the boy wasnt toldto protect the operation.
He only knew one thing: his mother wasnt dead.
And he was right.
Three months after the trial, with the guilty arrested, Anna appeared at her old doorstep.
