She looked at her son-in-law, silent for two seconds, then shook her head calmly.
"No idea."
A flicker of disappointment crossed his eyes.
"I was hoping to find Sunny and thank her properly. It would've fulfilled one of Julia's wishes." He paused. "But if you don't know her either, I guess it'll have to wait."
I didn't respond. I lowered my head and went back to feeding paper into the flames.
But the more I burned, the heavier the doubt sat in my chest.
My husband had died young. I'd raised Julia on my own.
Juggling a child and a job had been grueling, but Julia had always been easy. She'd been sensible from the time she was small, never giving me a reason to worry.
She was a kind girl. In her entire life, she'd never once gotten into a fight with anyone, let alone made an enemy.
That was one of the reasons the police had found the case so hard to crack.
Silas had been Julia's college classmate. They'd dated for five years, then been married for three.
For all eight of those years, he had treated her like she was the center of his world.
Every time Julia called me, she couldn't help gushing about him.
"Mom, Silas signed up for a cooking class today — just so he can make me something delicious every single day."
"Mom, I barely coughed twice this morning and Silas panicked. He dragged me to the hospital at the crack of dawn for a full checkup. You'd think I was dying."
"Mom, we ran into an unleashed German Shepherd on our walk today. It charged straight at me, and Silas threw himself in front of me without a second thought. He wrestled that dog with his bare hands. He was bleeding all over and didn't shed a single tear — but the moment he saw I'd scraped my knee from falling, he couldn't stop crying."
"Mom, I'm pregnant. Silas is over the moon. He already booked me the best postnatal care center in the city. He said he'd protect us — me and the baby — with his life."
"Mom, Silas is the best person in this world to me. Besides you."
Every time she mentioned his name, Julia's face lit up with a smile that came from somewhere deep and real.
I was her mother. I could tell. She was genuinely happy.
And I was certain — truly certain — that Silas loved my daughter.
That was why, after she was murdered, his grief had turned his hair white overnight.
In the three months since, he hadn't rested for a single day.
Especially after he'd posted the ten-million-dollar reward. Calls had poured in from every corner of the country.
If even one person claimed to have spotted someone suspicious, he'd get in his car and drive there immediately.
One night at two in the morning, he got a call. Someone in the next county over said there was a drifter who liked to follow pregnant women around — acted strange. Silas pulled on his clothes without a word and drove four hours through the dark. It came to nothing.
Things like that happened almost every day.
Yet he never stopped. Never slowed down. He'd chase any lead, no matter how thin, running himself ragged on the strength of a stranger's word.
People told him to take it easy.
He shook his head, jaw set.
"I can't let a single chance to get justice for Julia slip through my fingers."
When the task force was disbanded, he'd begged them with tears streaming down his face.
"Please. Just keep looking. A little longer."
"My wife and my child — they can't have died for nothing."
The shock of losing Julia had put me in the hospital. When I refused to eat, refused treatment, it was Silas who stayed at my bedside day and night, coaxing me back from the edge, over and over again.
"Mom, you're the most important person Julia had. If she's watching from up there and sees you like this — imagine how heartbroken she'd be."
Without Silas, I might never have pulled through.
It was precisely because I had felt his devotion firsthand that I couldn't make sense of what was gnawing at me now.
Who was lying?
If Silas was the one deceiving me, then where had he learned the name Sunny?
And why would he lie to me about something like that?
