Something was very wrong.
I stared at his face, dead serious, and pressed again:
"What exactly did she say?"
He glanced at me, then cast his mind back.
"She said that without Sunny, she probably wouldn't have survived. She called Sunny the greatest benefactor of her life and told me that someday, when I had the chance, I had to repay her."
"I asked her who Sunny was, where she lived. She just smiled and said she'd take me to meet her after the baby was born."
"She never got that chance."
His voice dropped lower with every word, until it finally broke into a choked sob.
But all I could do was clench the half-burned paper money tighter in my fist.
Sunny was the pet name I'd given Julia when she was small.
She'd been so tiny back then, soft and sweet-smelling, and I couldn't help calling her Sunny.
When she got older, she started complaining. Mom, that name is so embarrassing. Stop calling me that.
She even made me promise: if she ever got a boyfriend, or got married, I was never, under any circumstances, to mention the name Sunny in front of him. She was terrified of being laughed at.
So from that day on, Sunny became a forbidden word between us.
My daughter had despised that nickname. She would never have brought it up to her husband willingly.
And she certainly would never have called Sunny her savior.
Someone was lying.
While my mind raced, my son-in-law spoke again:
"Mom, Julia grew up with just you. Do you know this Sunny?"
I didn't give him an honest answer.
She looked at her son-in-law, silent for two seconds, then shook her head calmly.
"No idea."
A flicker of disappointment crossed his eyes.
"I was hoping to find Sunny and thank her properly. It would've fulfilled one of Julia's wishes." He paused. "But if you don't know her either, I guess it'll have to wait."
I didn't respond. I lowered my head and went back to feeding paper into the flames.
But the more I burned, the heavier the doubt sat in my chest.
My husband had died young. I'd raised Julia on my own.
Juggling a child and a job had been grueling, but Julia had always been easy. She'd been sensible from the time she was small, never giving me a reason to worry.
She was a kind girl. In her entire life, she'd never once gotten into a fight with anyone, let alone made an enemy.
That was one of the reasons the police had found the case so hard to crack.