Two minutes later, I was standing at their graves. They had been buried side by side, as was customary with mothers and children who perished together. The headstones were simple white slabs, smudged black by time and weather, laid horizontally on a low stone base, slightly elevated off the ground. Each stone was marked by the Hebrew and Gregorian dates of their birth and death. The right one bore the name Esther Kantor; the left the name Erich Kantor. Below the names and dates was inscribed the traditional acronym entrusting their souls to the Bundle of the Living.

And there were the flowers.

The sight of them brought me up short. A scatter of desiccated petals and shrunken stalks on the headstone bearing the name Erich Kantor. Willie Ackerland's grave. There were no flowers on Esther's grave.

How long ago had they been left here?

In this weather, no more than a week. But the bigger question was, who had left them? And why?

Suddenly, a brisk wind gusted and swept the flowers away. Had I arrived five minutes later than I did, I never would have known they had been there to begin with.

"So it's you, then."

I spun around. The scratchy voice belonged to a religious man with a bushy black beard laced with gray. He had on black pants and a vest over a white shirt beneath the hem of which peeped the tassels of his tzitzit. A large black yarmulke covered his bald head. He was leaning on a straw broom as he eyed me with clear blue eyes that looked too young for his fifty-something face.

"It's me, what?" I asked.

"The one who's always leaving flowers on that grave there. The little one's."

"Are you saying that there are regularly flowers here?"

He inclined his head. "So you're not him?"

"No."

He was disappointed to hear that. "It's regular, but not something to set your watch by. Sometimes a month goes by with no flowers, and then I'll find new ones one week after the next."

"And always on this grave—" I pointed at Willie Ackerland's grave "—but never on this one?" I moved my finger to indicate Esther's headstone.

"Yes. Just on the little one's."

"Any particular kind of flowers? Any special color?"

"No," he said. "They can be red one month and yellow the next."

"How long has this been going on?"

He scratched his bearded cheek. "The first time I saw the flowers was during my first month here, six years ago. But a colleague of mine told me it's been happening for longer than that."

"And you've never seen the person who leaves them?"

He shook his head. "I start my day early in the morning—seven thirty, eight at the latest—and the flowers are already there. Whoever he is, he comes at night when the cemetery's deserted. Strange, isn't it?"

Very strange, I thought.

"I wouldn't want to be here at night," the man continued. "In the dark, with all the spirits of the dead around me."