Chapter Sixty Three

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

ARIA

The cold wind blew around me, biting at my cheeks, but I barely felt it. The world around me had dulled to a muted gray, just like my heart. Aunt Evita and my grandmother, who I later learned her name was Elena, lay beneath the earth, beneath my feet. It’s been five days since they died, on the day that was supposed to be the happiest of my life. Instead, it had turned into a nightmare.

The silence in the cemetery was thick, broken only by the occasional rustle of leaves whispering secrets to the wind. Even though it was daytime, dark clouds hung low in the sky. It had rained heavily these past few days, as if the universe was mourning with me.

Gravestones surrounded me in the large expanse of land, jutting from the ground in different shapes and sizes. On most of them, the inscriptions were faded and illegible, as if the memories of those buried beneath them were slowly being erased. The grass was dark green, patches of it wilting under the weight of the d