The Maid Took Leftover Bread to the Mother He Had Buried

Chapter 1 — Save Some for Daniel

The maid looked over her shoulder before slipping the leftover bread into her beige canvas bag.

Daniel stood behind the kitchen doorframe, half his face in shadow. A small loaf struck the edge of the bag. She caught it before it fell, held the bag against her apron, and looked toward the doorway again.

He stayed still.

Every night… the leftover food.

He had noticed the pattern three evenings in a row. Tonight, the question would not leave him alone.

Who is she taking it to?

The maid settled the strap over her pale blue uniform and hurried out through the back door. Daniel waited until her footsteps had faded before following. She never looked back.

He kept his distance along the garden wall and through the narrow streets beyond the estate. By the time she reached an old cottage near the disused mill, the last sunlight was fading from the roofs.

She pushed open the wooden door with her shoulder. The canvas bag brushed against the frame. She went inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Daniel approached quietly and stopped beside it.

Through the gap, he saw a gray-haired woman sitting by the window with her back toward him. Her beige cardigan hung loosely around her shoulders.

The maid took bread from the same bag and placed it in the woman's hands. Then she knelt beside her chair.

The woman did not eat. She set the bread gently on the table.

“Save some for Daniel.”

His suspicion vanished so abruptly that he could not remember what he had intended to say.

He knew that voice.

His hand closed around the doorframe. He moved half a step nearer.

“Mom?”

The maid turned sharply. The old woman's shoulders stirred, and she began to look around.

When Daniel saw her face, he could not make himself cross the threshold.

There was the small scar beside her eyebrow, the pale blue eyes, the expression he had spent eighteen months trying to remember without crying.

“They told me you were dead.”

Her lips trembled. For a moment, no answer came.

Then she held out her hand.

“They told me you didn't want me anymore.”

Daniel crossed the room and knelt so quickly that his knee struck the floorboards. Her fingers touched his cheek, tentative at first, then desperate.

He had stood beside a sealed coffin. He had scattered white roses over fresh earth. His uncle had held him upright when the grief became too much.

Now his mother was warm beneath his hands.

Behind him, the maid rose slowly.

“My name is Anna,” she said. “I can explain what I know. But please let her finish her supper first.”