That Hillside

Every year during Qingming, when we returned to the village to honor our ancestors, my grandfather would burn paper offerings in front of a nameless grave whose mound had partly collapsed.

When I asked whose grave it was, he gave me only four words: "They were all ancestors."

This year, I secretly dug the grave open.

What was buried inside made my father drop to his knees on the spot.

The secret the whole village had guarded for twenty years could no longer stay hidden from that moment on.