Part 1
For six years, my son and I planted sunflowers in memory of his twin sister, whom he lost when they were just six years old. But last Saturday, shortly before sunrise, we went out into the garden and discovered that every single flower had been cut down—except for one. Hanging from that one remaining stem was a small white box.
My son Lukas lost his twin sister Lina when they were six years old. From the moment of their birth, they were inseparable. When Lukas laughed, Lina laughed with him. When Lina cried, Lukas cried too. Lina was fearless. Lukas was cautious, always on the lookout for danger. One summer afternoon, we were at my parents’ farm. The twins asked if they could take stale bread down to the pond behind the pasture to feed the ducks. I said yes. Only Lukas came back. He was wet up to his knees, covered in mud, and screaming so loudly that I could barely understand him. When his words finally made sense, he was already pulling me toward the water. We found bent reeds, churned-up water, and half a sack of bread on the bank. The police searched until nightfall. They looked into the pond, searched the path behind the fence, and the drainage ditch that carried the water away after heavy rain. A distant cousin named Vinzenz, who lived nearby, stayed out all night and kept searching. The officers believed Lina had slipped on the bank and been carried away by the deeper current. They called it a tragic accident. Lukas called it his fault. A duck had been trapped in the reeds. Lina wanted to help it. Lukas had been holding her hand. He let go for a single second to grab the bread sack before it blew into the water. When he looked back, Lina had stepped too close to the edge. And then she was gone. From that day on, Lukas woke up screaming. “I shouldn’t have let go of her hand.” We tried therapy. We tried patience. We tried every gentle explanation that people offered us. But nothing reached the part of Lukas that believed he had abandoned his sister in a single careless moment. Then, on what would have been Lina’s seventh birthday, Lukas asked me for sunflower seeds. “They were her favorite flowers,” he whispered. “We should still celebrate her.” So we planted them together behind the farm. The first bed was uneven and wild, but Lukas loved it. After that, it became our tradition. Every spring, we turned the soil together and pressed new seeds into the ground. Every summer, Lukas sat among the tall, yellow blooms and told Lina everything she had missed. When he made the soccer team, he told the sunflowers first. Last Saturday marked six years since we lost her. Lukas woke before sunrise and asked if we could bring fresh lemonade out to the garden before the day got too hot. The moment we stepped outside, he froze in his tracks. Every single sunflower had been cut down. Every single one. Except for one tall stem standing in the middle of the bed. A small white box hung from it on a ribbon. Lukas looked at me. “Mom…” My hands trembled as I untied the ribbon. When I opened the box, my knees almost gave way.
Part 2
Inside lay the photograph of a girl standing by a sunflower field at the roadside. She wore a yellow sleeveless dress, her collarbone exposed to the sunlight. For an impossible second, I thought I was looking at Lina. Lukas snatched the photo from my hand so quickly that I could barely react. He stared at it without blinking. “Mom,” he whispered. “That’s her.” Behind the photo was a folded note. I should have kept a cool head. I should have looked more closely. But grief does strange things to the mind. I saw this girl, older and taller, and for a moment, the daughter I had buried in my heart became real again. The note read: “She is alive. Bring 40,000 euros if you want the truth.” Below it was a phone number. “Call now.” I didn’t stop Lukas from dialing. I needed to hear someone say Lina’s name too. He put the phone on speaker, his hands shaking. A man answered on the second ring. His voice was deep and calm, almost rehearsed. He said he knew what had happened to Lina. If we wanted the truth, we had to bring forty thousand euros in cash to the “Waldblick” inn the next afternoon. Lukas could barely speak. “Is she okay?” The man paused just long enough for the silence to hurt. “She is alive.” That was all Lukas needed to know. Right there in the destroyed garden, he collapsed, clinging to the photo. I wrapped my arms around him, but I was crying too. Neither of us could think clearly anymore.
Afterward, Lukas carried the photo from room to room, as if it might disappear if he put it down. He said maybe someone had taken Lina that day. Maybe someone had found her and kept her. Maybe she had only recently learned who she really was. I listened to him because I wanted to believe him. I didn’t tell my parents at first. I wanted to be allowed to hope for one hour alongside my son. It didn’t last twenty minutes. My mother came in from the yard, saw the photo in Lukas’s hands, and froze completely. “Oh my God,” she whispered. My father said nothing for almost a full minute. By midday, the four of us were sitting at the kitchen table, the photo in the center. Lukas would not tolerate any doubt. “What if someone took her back then?” he pressed. “What if she couldn’t come back? What if she only found out later?” My mother cried quietly, touching the edge of the photo again and again. My father stared at it for a long time before finally saying: “She does look like her.” By evening, we had spun entire stories around a single image and a short note. We weren’t stupid. We were grieving. There’s a difference, but when hope is involved, the distance between the two becomes dangerously small. I barely slept that night. Lukas didn’t sleep at all. Around two in the morning, I found him sitting at the kitchen table with the photo. “I’m trying to remember if her left eyebrow always sat a little higher when she was thinking too,” he said. “Lukas…” “What if she’s been waiting for us?” The next morning, the cold daylight forced us to look again. My mother was the first to say it. “Where is Lina’s birthmark?” Everything inside me froze. I took the photo from Lukas and looked more closely. Lina had a small, crescent-shaped birthmark near her collarbone. The girl in the photo didn’t have one. Lukas saw my face change. “What is it?” I didn’t answer quickly enough. “What is it?” he repeated. I turned the photo toward him and pointed at it. For a second, he just stared. Then he shook his head. “No. Maybe it’s the angle.” “It’s not.” “Maybe makeup covered it.” “Lukas.” “Maybe the image was edited.” His voice grew louder. I think he felt the truth was unstoppable and hated me for being the one to see it first. Then he looked from one face to the next, and finally, the realization hit him. He slumped forward, covering his mouth with both hands.
