Laura hadn’t been back in years.

The cemetery looked smaller than she remembered, quieter too—no longer intimidating, just worn down by time and weather. Rows of stones stood like witnesses who had learned not to speak. Her footsteps were careful, almost hesitant, as if the ground itself might object to her presence.

Her father’s grave sat where it always had.

Simple. Unadorned. His name carved cleanly, without the context of what he had been or what he had done. Death had a way of equalizing monsters and men alike.

Laura knelt.

She did not cry at first. Grief, she had learned, did not always arrive with tears. Sometimes it came...