Chapter 1 - THE VOICE INSIDE
Mark Bennett had spent the entire funeral trying not to look at the closed coffin. Every time his eyes drifted toward it, he remembered Sarah making pancakes with Toby three weeks earlier, Sarah complaining that he always loaded the dishwasher incorrectly, Sarah leaving a coffee mug on the bathroom counter because she was incapable of finishing one before it went cold. None of those memories belonged naturally beside polished mahogany, white funeral flowers, and a pastor preparing to tell sixty people that thirty-six years was still enough time for a meaningful life.
Toby sat beside him in a small black suit, his legs barely reaching the edge of the pew. The six-year-old had asked twice why he could not see his mother one more time, and Mark had given him the same answer Clara gave everyone: Sarah’s sudden death had made an open casket impossible. Mark hated the explanation but had accepted it because Sarah’s sister had handled almost everything while he was still trying to understand how his wife could leave for Clara’s house on Tuesday afternoon and be declared dead before midnight.
The service had nearly ended when Clara walked toward the coffin and bent to check the metal latch along its side. Toby suddenly pulled away from Mark and ran down the aisle. Before anyone could stop him, he threw both arms across the lid and shouted, “Dad! Mom’re talking!”
A nervous murmur moved through the church. Clara seized Toby by the shoulder and tried to pull him away, telling him to stop causing trouble, but Mark reached them in three strides and knocked her hand away from his son. Toby pressed his ear against the coffin again. For half a second Mark heard nothing except his own pulse, then something faint came from inside.
A breath.
Not a voice. Not wood shifting. A weak, uneven breath.
Mark reached for the latch. Clara stepped directly in front of him and said Sarah was dead, the funeral home had confirmed it, and Toby was confused because he was grieving. Mark shoved past her hard enough to send her stumbling into a flower stand, snapped the metal latch open, and raised the lid.
Sarah lay inside in the black dress Clara chose for her burial.
Her face was pale, her lips dry, but her chest moved.
“Sarah?”
Her eyelids fluttered. Mark reached inside with both arms as Toby began sobbing beside him. Sarah’s hand found the front of his jacket before she managed one word.
“Mark.”
The church dissolved into shouting. Someone called emergency services, the pastor cleared people away from the aisle, and Mark helped Sarah sit high enough to breathe more easily without trying to lift her completely from the coffin. Clara backed toward the side exit.
Sarah saw her.
Her grip tightened.
“She locked me in the basement.”
Mark turned.
Clara stopped.
Her handbag slipped from her shoulder and struck the floor. Lipstick, a set of keys, and several folded documents slid across the aisle. One page stopped beside Mark’s shoe.
He picked it up.
At the top was the name HAWTHORNE FAMILY TRUST. Below it appeared Sarah Elizabeth Bennett, primary beneficiary, followed by language stating that upon Sarah’s death, interim administrative control would transfer to Clara Hawthorne pending establishment of a subtrust for Toby.
Mark grabbed the next page.
It was an amendment.
Sarah supposedly authorized Clara to assume expanded authority over the trust and its family-company holdings upon Sarah’s death or incapacity.
The signature at the bottom looked exactly like Sarah’s.
The date was two days earlier.
Sarah looked at it from inside the coffin and went whiter than she already was.
“I never signed that.”
Clara turned toward the exit.
May you like
Two men from the second row blocked her before she reached it.
By the time paramedics entered the church, nobody was looking at the coffin anymore. They were looking at Clara.
