I found him at the edge of the koi pond, sitting on the moss-eaten stone where he once taught me the names of constellations. His back was straight, but his hands — those hands that had rebuilt a thousand broken things — lay open and empty on his knees.

Not a heart.

A question.

“She was already gone,” he said. “But her heart still beat in my chest. I carried it for three years. It spoke to me at night. It said: Give me somewhere to rest. ”

“No,” he said again. “It is sleeping. And inside its ribcage, a girl who died for us dreams of a garden where the rain never falls, only the names of flowers.”