Someone keeps leaving flowers at my mother’s grave with no name

Dear Delyara, Every month, someone leaves white tulips on my mother’s grave. Always twelve. No card. No ribbon. We first thought it was a relative. Nobody admits it. Mum was a widow for twenty-two years and never mentioned another relationship. She was private, but not secretive, or so I believed. I have started visiting on different days hoping to catch whoever comes. Last week, I found the flowers still wet from rain and fresh enough that the person could not have been far ahead of me. I walked around the cemetery like an idiot looking at strangers. Part of me is touched that someone loved her enough to remember. Another part is jealous. I was her daughter. I thought I knew the important people in her life. Who has a monthly grief that exists completely outside our family? My brother says leave it alone. He thinks mystery is allowed. I agree in theory. In practice, I keep counting tulips and wondering whether my mother had a whole private chapter nobody thought her children needed to read.