The Phone at the Grave: A Story of Love, Loss, and Second Chances
Chapter One: The Weight of Silence
Rain drummed relentlessly against the grimy windows of the city bus, each droplet tracing a jagged path downward—mirroring the silent tears carving fresh trails across Olesya’s pale cheeks. Cradling her swollen belly, she huddled in the back corner, wrapped in the worn navy coat Andrey had given her last winter, a fragile symbol of a future that once brimmed with hope but now felt unbearably hollow.
At just twenty-three and six months pregnant, Olesya carried more than life within her—she bore the heavy weight of a love shattered three months ago, severed in the cruelest way imaginable. The other passengers kept their distance, as if sensing the raw grief radiating from her small frame like a dying ember’s faint warmth. The number 47 bus was a route she knew all too well by now—winding past the industrial district where she had worked, beside the vocational school where she had learned her craft, and finally to the sprawling cemetery at the city’s edge, the place where her world had crumbled.
The bus shuddered to a halt, brakes hissing softly. Olesya rose slowly, each movement measured and heavy, as though she were wading through thick water. The driver, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, caught her reflection in the rearview mirror and offered a quiet look of understanding—an unspoken acknowledgment from a stranger who glimpsed the depths of her sorrow.
