I Buried My First Love After He Died in a Fire 30 Years Ago – I Mourned Him Until I Realized Who My New Neighbor Was

I leaned back in my chair. “That’s not just manipulation…”

“I know, Sammie.”

“You let me think you were dead,” I said quietly.

**

My father, Neville, had never trusted the closed casket. He didn’t say it out loud, but I saw it in the way he watched Gabriel’s parents, Camille and Louis, at the funeral.

Afterward, he kept me busy at the shop, kept food on my plate, and kept my hands moving so my mind couldn’t drown.

When I married Connor, he didn’t smile in the photos. He hugged me and whispered, “You deserve real love, kid.” I thought he meant Connor.

Now I wondered if he meant Gabriel — and if he’d been carrying a secret he couldn’t put down.

“You let me think you were dead.”

**