That afternoon, I walked to the neighborhood café by the park entrance. Maybe someone there had seen who left the rose. As I waited for my usual latte, I noticed an elderly woman sitting alone at a corner table. She wore a cozy cardigan draped over her shoulders and gazed out the window toward the lake. Something in her posture—quiet strength, maybe a touch of sorrow—caught my attention.
After a brief moment of hesitation, I approached her.
“Excuse me,” I said gently, “do you know who might have left a rose by the lake recently?”
Her expression softened. She motioned for me to sit.
“You must be the one who found it,” she said with quiet warmth. “Thank you.”
“I did,” I replied. “I tossed it into the water for her. How did you know?”
Her small smile said more than words.
“She’s my daughter-in-law. Clara. I’m Evelyn.”
Evelyn told me the story.
Her son, Daniel, had passed away unexpectedly two years ago. He and Clara had been inseparable since college. The lake had always been their place—summer or winter, sunshine or snow, they went every weekend, bundled up with thermoses of hot chocolate.
When Daniel died, they scattered his ashes at the water’s edge.
But life had gotten harder for Clara since then. Her mobility had declined, and emotionally, she had shut down. She rarely visited the lake now—not because she didn’t want to, but because it was too painful, too inaccessible.
“She’s been struggling,” Evelyn admitted. “She works too much. She doesn’t talk much. But last week, she called me in tears. She couldn’t make it to the lake, but she wanted to leave something for him.”
So Evelyn had suggested the note and the rose.
And I, by pure coincidence—or perhaps something more—had found it.
