Mihai started the security camera recording on his phone, his hands barely trembling.
It was late at night; he had returned exhausted after an endless day, but curiosity prevented him from waiting. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
On the screen, a familiar silhouette approached Catherine’s grave. It was a woman with long hair, wrapped in a heavy coat and a scarf covering part of her face.
Still, Mihai instantly recognized that gait. It was Milana, his adopted daughter of eight years, silently approaching the grave.
The girl sat down next to the tombstone and began to speak. The camera’s microphone couldn’t record her words.
After a few minutes, Milana took the yellow roses and replaced them with a small bouquet of wildflowers, probably picked by herself. She put the roses in a bag and left, occasionally looking around to make sure no one was watching.
„What the hell…?” Mihai muttered, holding his breath.
He fast-forwarded the recording and saw that Milana returned in the following days, sometimes accompanied by the nanny, always to remove the flowers and replace them.
It was clear she wasn’t doing it out of malice. There was something else, a hidden reason that Mihai couldn’t understand.
He put the phone on the table and massaged his temples. He loved the girl, but he couldn’t deny that the relationship between her and Catalina had been tense. He remembered how, in the last months before the accident, Milana avoided being alone with her adoptive mother, seeking refuge in the nanny’s company as if she were afraid of her.
That night, Mihai couldn’t sleep. His mind revolved between memories of the past and the anxiety of the present. He thought about Catalina’s increasingly strange behavior, her unexplained absences, and the mysterious accident that experts had never been able to fully explain.
The next day, when Milana left for school, Mihai entered her room, fighting the guilt of prying into her privacy. He searched carefully, unsure exactly what he expected to find.
Under the bed, he found a cardboard box adorned with shells and pebbles: the kind of box a little girl keeps her treasures in. Inside were yellow roses, dried and pressed between the pages of a book. Beside them, a pink-covered diary with shiny stickers.
Mihai opened it hesitantly. He was aware of violating his daughter’s privacy, but curiosity got the better of him.
The diary was filled with drawings and notes written in Milana’s childlike handwriting. Many pages talked about school, friends, and games. But halfway through the notebook, the writing became hurried, stained with dried tears.
“Mama Cati got angry today. She said I’m not her real daughter and that I never will be. If I tell Dad anything, he’ll send me back to the orphanage. I’m scared.”
Mihai felt a lump in his throat. He turned the pages: each line was a cry of pain the little girl had kept silent.
“Mama Cati punished me because I broke a glass. She locked me in the cleaning room. I cried a lot, but Dad was at work and Alla had the day off. No one listened.”
“She told me that I would soon have a real son and that there would be no room for me in the house.”
The last entries were just before the accident:
“I heard her on the phone today. She said she would soon get rid of Dad and me. That she would go far away with someone named Alex. I was in the next room.”
Mihai closed the diary, stunned. His memories of Catalina shattered in the face of this truth written by his daughter. How could he have missed it?
He decided to check his wife’s laptop, which had been stored away since her death. He found it in the closet, hidden under clothes. The password was the same as always: their wedding date.
Nothing unusual appeared in the regular emails, but he discovered a second, unknown account. It used the same password. There was evidence: messages to a man named Alexandru, plans to run away together, plane tickets. And even worse: a multimillion-dollar life insurance policy in Mihai’s name, taken out secretly.
The last email, sent the morning of the accident, read:
“Everything is ready. They’ll find an unrecognizable body in my car and think it’s me. By the time Mihai collects the insurance, we’ll be long gone. I don’t care what happens to him or that child they forced on me. I just want to be with you and finally have our child.”
Mihai was petrified. He checked his documents and found the policy: two million euros, about to be redeemed.
At that moment, the phone rang. It was Alla, the babysitter:
„Mr. Mihai, Milana ran away from school! No one knows where she is.”
He understood immediately. He ran to the cemetery. The sky was dark, about to rain. There was Milana, kneeling in front of the grave, murmuring:
„I know you don’
You’re here. Alla explained to me what death is, but I saw you at the mall with a man. I recognized you. Why did you lie to us?
Mihai approached and hugged her as she burst into tears.
„I know, my love. It was all a lie.”
The storm broke. Father and daughter returned home, soaked but united. That night Mihai handed all the evidence to the police.
Three weeks later, Catalina and Alexandru were arrested in a town on the Spanish coast, using false identities. The investigation revealed they had used the body of a homeless woman to stage the accident.
At the trial, Mihai held Milana’s hand. When the girl met Catalina’s gaze, she stood firm, never lowering her eyes.
Catalina was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Alexandru received 20.
Back home, Milana asked, „Dad, now that we know the truth, do we not have to go to the cemetery anymore?”
Mihai smiled tenderly at her.
„No, darling. But maybe we should take flowers to the woman who’s really there.”
Milana nodded.
„We could take daisies.”
They bought a bouquet of white daisies and left them on the grave, offering a prayer to the stranger. The sky cleared, and Mihai, seeing his daughter smile, understood that they finally had a future, built on truth and love.