People first noticed the boy in the cemetery at the start of May. He looked about ten years old. Every single day, he came to the same grave. He’d sit on the cold ground, leaning against the stone, shouting up at the sky:

“She’s alive! She’s not buried here!”

Visitors watched him with pity. They all thought the same thing — he was grieving, unable to accept his loss. They figured he’d eventually come to terms with the fact his mother was gone.

But a week passed, then another, and the boy kept showing up. Rain or shine. The cemetery caretaker grew tired of the shouting. One day, he called the police.

A young officer arrived and approached the boy carefully.

“Hi there,” he said gently.

The boy flinched but looked up. His face was tear-streaked and fragile, yet his eyes held a strange maturity.

“Do you know how you can tell if someone is breathing underground?” he asked quietly.

The officer had no answer.

“They said Mom fell asleep at the wheel. But she was never tired. Never!” the boy whispered. “And they never let me say goodbye…”

The policeman glanced at the grave. The earth was loose, freshly turned. Nearby lay a shovel.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“The people he worked for. The man with the gold ring… and a woman who always smiles — even when she’s angry.”

“Do you know their names?”

The boy told him. The officer wrote them down. There was something about the boy’s voice that made the policeman remember, and report it to his superiors.

An investigation was launched. It turned out the boy’s mother — Maria — was an accountant at a major pharmaceutical company.

A week before the so-called “accident,” she vanished from work. Her employer claimed she was “exhausted” — then declared her dead. The death certificate was signed by the company doctor.

At the funeral, the coffin was sealed shut. No autopsy was performed. The officer demanded an exhumation. When the coffin was opened, it was empty.

The case went federal. New details came to light: Maria wasn’t just an accountant. She had collected a large file on the company’s management — documents, audio recordings, money transfers, illegal schemes. She planned to hand everything over to the prosecutor. But one of her coworkers found out.

Then came the twist — even the boy didn’t know. Ana hadn’t died in any accident. Her death was faked — on orders from the police.

On the day she brought her evidence to the station, authorities already held pieces of other files targeting the company.

To avoid alerting the company bosses, Maria was placed in witness protection. To keep the cover, her death was staged. The coffin had been empty all along.

All the documents made it to court. But the boy wasn’t told the truth — to keep the operation safe. All he knew was that his mother wasn’t really gone.

And he was right. Three months after the trial ended with the arrests of the guilty parties, Ana showed up at the old house’s doorstep.