No flowers for the dead - Chapter 34: Chapter 34
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 34: Chapter 34. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
The hardest part wasn’t the loneliness.
It was the silence.
The kind that crept in between breaths. The kind that curled under doorways and clung to photo frames. The kind that made even her own footsteps sound like someone else’s.
For the first time in years, Alina sat at the head of the dining table alone.
No laughter. No low hum of Elias reading the paper beside her.
No Elara babbling about school or some impossible theory about stars.
Just her. And a place setting she couldn’t bring herself to clear.
⸻
The lawyers had called.
They wanted to discuss the foundation Elias left behind—the properties, the board, the donations.
She put them off for a week. Then another.
But on the fifteenth day, she opened the envelope sealed in his handwriting.
Inside was a single instruction, written in black ink on thick paper:
“Build something only you could build.”
Beneath it, no explanation.
No business plan.
Just trust.
⸻
So she did.
She started with the old theater downtown, the one they used to sneak into as teenagers.
She had it restored—not as a performance space, but as a sanctuary. A place for stories, voices, women who’d been silenced too long.
It became the House of the Unsaid.
A stage for secrets.
A haven for healing.
A legacy that belonged entirely to her.
⸻
They came in slow waves—women with notebooks, songs, paintings, confessions.
And Alina sat in the back, listening, crying, clapping, remembering.
It wasn’t the empire Elias had built.
It wasn’t steel and glass and financial portfolios.
It was softer. Quieter.
But just as powerful.
And entirely hers.
It was the silence.
The kind that crept in between breaths. The kind that curled under doorways and clung to photo frames. The kind that made even her own footsteps sound like someone else’s.
For the first time in years, Alina sat at the head of the dining table alone.
No laughter. No low hum of Elias reading the paper beside her.
No Elara babbling about school or some impossible theory about stars.
Just her. And a place setting she couldn’t bring herself to clear.
⸻
The lawyers had called.
They wanted to discuss the foundation Elias left behind—the properties, the board, the donations.
She put them off for a week. Then another.
But on the fifteenth day, she opened the envelope sealed in his handwriting.
Inside was a single instruction, written in black ink on thick paper:
“Build something only you could build.”
Beneath it, no explanation.
No business plan.
Just trust.
⸻
So she did.
She started with the old theater downtown, the one they used to sneak into as teenagers.
She had it restored—not as a performance space, but as a sanctuary. A place for stories, voices, women who’d been silenced too long.
It became the House of the Unsaid.
A stage for secrets.
A haven for healing.
A legacy that belonged entirely to her.
⸻
They came in slow waves—women with notebooks, songs, paintings, confessions.
And Alina sat in the back, listening, crying, clapping, remembering.
It wasn’t the empire Elias had built.
It wasn’t steel and glass and financial portfolios.
It was softer. Quieter.
But just as powerful.
And entirely hers.
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 34. Continue reading Chapter 35 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.