Chapter 1

1: 1

On Thanksgiving, I'd just finished cooking when a few lines of text scrolled across my vision out of nowhere.

"Still cooking, are you? Your husband's about to run off with his mistress!"

"He's taken out a loan of several million too, and he's planning to fake his own death tonight."

"By the time you reach the hospital, your mother-in-law will tell you the body's already been cremated. The debt, the kid, the old woman—all of it dumped on you to clean up."

"And the son isn't even yours. Once your husband and his mistress come back to the country, you'll be the one left to freeze to death on the street!"

A shiver went through me. I thought my eyes were playing tricks. Then, the very next second,

I got a call from my nine-year-old son.

"Mom, come to the hospital, hurry. Dad drowned saving someone."

"……"

Hearing him, I gripped the phone tight, rushed downstairs, and drove to the hospital.

On the way there, I kept thinking about those lines I'd just seen.

Was it a coincidence? Mervyn Simmons and I fell in love in college, then married and had a child, more than a decade together, and he was always gentle and thoughtful with me. How could he cheat, let alone fake his death for a mistress and abandon me? My head was full of doubt and panic.

I called a classmate who works at the hospital and asked her to go check for me.

A few minutes later, she called me back.

"Mamie Swanson, your husband really is here at our hospital. When I got there, your mother-in-law was getting ready to have him cremated. Isn't that awfully quick?"

My heart sank all the way down. My husband had barely died, and his mother was already rushing to cremate him, not even waiting for me to see him one last time. It was too strange.

I spoke into the phone.

"Please, can you hold my mother-in-law off? I'm on my way, I'll be there any minute."

She agreed, and I hung up, chest heavy. I didn't want to believe what those lines said, but all of it was too much of a coincidence, and my mother-in-law was acting far too out of character.

By the time I reached the hospital morgue, my mother-in-law was arguing with my classmate.

"Who are you to stop me from cremating my son?"

Just then my son spotted me and blurted out, a little flustered,

"Mom, how'd you get here so fast?"

The moment my mother-in-law saw me, a flash of nerves crossed her eyes before she started crying.

"Mamie, you're here. Mervyn came home from work, saw someone had fallen into the water, and went in to save them, and he never came back up. I was just about to take him to be cremated, so he could rest in peace sooner."

But Mervyn couldn't swim to save his life. He was hopeless in the water. How could he have gone in to rescue anyone?

I looked toward the bed, my voice catching.

"Mom, I haven't even seen Mervyn one last time. Why are you in such a hurry to cremate him?"

Then I walked straight to the side of the bed and reached up to pull back the sheet.

My mother-in-law rushed to block me.

"Mamie, he drowned, the body's all swollen and bloated, it's horrifying. I didn't want you scared, that's why I wanted him cremated quickly, so you wouldn't have to grieve any harder."

I shook my head and cried louder.

"Mom, Mervyn is my husband. I've been with him over ten years. No matter what he looks like now, I have to see him one last time."

With that, I shoved her aside and pulled back the sheet.

Mervyn lay on the bed, and if not for the ghastly bluish pallor of his face, you'd never guess he was dead at all, and certainly not from drowning.

I stood frozen for a few seconds, then turned to my classmate.

"Doctor, someone who dies from drowning—does the body look like this afterward?"

She frowned too.

"His body doesn't look like a drowning at all. Though it's possible he was pulled out in time, so it didn't change."

My mother-in-law nodded quickly.

"Yes, that's right, Mervyn was pulled out very soon after he drowned, so the body didn't change."

A moment ago she'd said it was swollen and too gruesome to look at, and now suddenly he'd been pulled out right away. The two stories didn't line up at all. If that wasn't a guilty conscience, what was it?

My hands clenched into fists, nails digging deep into my palms. There was no doubt now—those lines were real.

Someone grabbed hold of me.

"Mamie, I know Mervyn's passing is breaking your heart, but you have to take care of yourself. You can't collapse now. The boy and Auntie need you to look after them. Let me take you downstairs to rest."

I turned around and only then realized that Mervyn's childhood friend, Brooklyn Harding, was here too.

Brooklyn read the confusion in my eyes and started explaining.

"Mamie, I happened to run into Mervyn after work today, and he was giving me a ride home since it was on the way. But when we passed the river, we saw a child in the water calling for help. Mervyn went in to save the kid, and he was the one who didn't come back up."