Chapter 2 - BREATH OF THE DEAD
The wooden lid groaned under the violent bite of a steel crowbar.
A sharp crack echoed in the cold air, followed by a sliver of gray morning light that pierced the gloom of the casket. The stale scent of lilies was suddenly cut by the brisk, ocean-scented wind of the Southern California coast.
Hands—rough, dirt-encrusted, and trembling—gripped the edges of the split timber and hauled the lid upward.
"Dear Lord Almighty," the old man choked out, stumbling back into the damp mound of dirt.
His grandson, Zachary, a broad-shouldered young man in worn canvas overalls, dropped his shovel. His jaw went slack, his chest heaving with terror as his eyes locked onto mine.
I tried to sit up, but the lingering poison turned my muscles to water. A ragged gasp tore from my throat—a wet, desperate sound that sounded barely human.
Barnaby, the golden-brown mutt whose relentless barking had kept my soul tethered to this earth, scrambled over the edge of the pit. He didn't flinch. He pushed his wet snout directly into my cold palm, whining softly, his tail whipping furiously against the trench wall.
"Grandpa... she’s looking at us," Zachary whispered, his voice cracking with sheer panic. "She’s breathing. She’s alive!"
"Don't just stand there, boy!" the old gravedigger barked, snapping out of his shock. "Help me lift her out! Easy now... easy!"
Their calloused hands slid under my arms and behind my knees. As they lifted me into the open air, the agony of returning circulation felt like needles of fire piercing every nerve. My knees collapsed the second my bare feet brushed the grass. I wasn't wearing funeral clothes. Christopher hadn't even bothered to dress me properly. I was wearing the simple cotton pajama set I had worn to bed the night before, wrapped only in a cheap polyester shroud.
"Breathe, ma'am. Just take slow breaths," the old man said gently, stripping off his heavy woolen work jacket and draping it around my shivering shoulders. The warmth of the coat and the smell of dry tobacco and pine oil grounded me.
"Who... who are you?" I managed to whisper, my vocal cords scraping together like sandpaper.
"I'm Arthur," the old man said, his weathered face etched with deep lines of disbelief and outrage. "I’ve tended this cemetery for forty-two years, daughter. I’ve seen grief, I’ve seen neglect, and I’ve seen cruelty. But I have never seen a man pay six thousand dollars in cash at four in the morning to dump a pine box into an unrecorded plot without an officiant, a certificate, or a single tear."
"Six thousand... cash?" I rasped, clinging to Arthur’s sleeve.
"Pulled it straight out of a leather briefcase," Zachary chimed in, his hands still shaking. "Told us his wife died of a sudden brain aneurysm in her sleep. Said her dying wish was to be returned to the earth immediately, in total silence, before the vultures in her extended family came snooping for money."
A bitter, hysterical laugh tried to rise in my throat, choking me. Christopher hadn't just poisoned me; he had constructed a cover story so clean, so swift, that my disappearance wouldn't even be investigated for days. By the time anyone wondered where Samantha Vance was, my body would have decomposed under six feet of unmarked dirt.
"We need to call the police right now," Zachary said, pulling a battered smartphone from his pocket. "This is attempted murder. We have to report this!"
"No!" I cried out, my voice unexpectedly sharp.
Both men froze, staring at me.
"Please... don't call the police," I pleaded, my fingers digging into Arthur's coat. My mind was racing, slicing through the fog of the sedative. "If you call 911 right now, the local precinct will dispatch a car. They will contact my husband as next of kin to notify him of an 'incident' at the cemetery. Christopher has friends in the county coroner’s office. He has money, lawyers, and he has Pamela."
"Pamela?" Arthur asked, his brow furrowing.
"The woman who came with him," I said, bile rising in my throat. "She works in corporate probate. If they know I’m breathing, they will run. Or worse, they will finish what they started before anyone believes my story."
Arthur looked at me for a long, quiet moment. He was a man who lived alongside death; he understood the quiet rot of human deception better than most. He nodded slowly at his grandson. "Put the phone away, Zach."
"Grandpa, what are you talking about?" Zachary protested. "She was buried alive!"
"And if she goes to the precinct looking like a ghost with dirt under her nails, without proof of who poisoned her, that slick husband of hers will claim she had a psychotic episode and had herself hidden away," Arthur said pragmatically. He turned back to me. "You need proof of what was done to you. And you need to know what they're doing right this second."
Arthur helped me toward the small stone caretaker’s cottage tucked beneath a grove of weeping willows at the edge of the property. Inside, the kettle was humming on an ancient cast-iron stove. Zachary brought me a mug of hot black tea with honey. The heat seeped into my fingers, clearing the final cobwebs of the drug from my bloodstream.
"They left in a hurry," Arthur said, pulling a small silver object from his pocket and placing it on the wooden table between us. "The young woman dropped this when she climbed back into the car. She was in such a rush to pull down the sun visor and check her makeup that she didn't notice it fall into the gravel."
I looked down. My breath caught in my throat.
It was a delicate gold bracelet—interlocking links of white and rose gold, shaped like small forget-me-nots. In the center was a small, personalized charm engraved with a date: October 14, 2017.
"That's Pamela's," I murmured, my hand trembling as I picked it up. But as I turned the charm over, my heart violently seized against my ribs.
On the back of the charm, where a jeweler usually stamps the karat mark, was another inscription. An inscription that made no sense.
To my little bird. Always your papa.
October 14, 2017, wasn't Pamela’s birthday. It wasn't an anniversary Christopher could have shared with her—they had supposedly met through my firm only three years ago.
October 14, 2017, was the day my father underwent open-heart surgery. And "little bird" was the private, sacred nickname my father had called me since I was five years old.
Why did Pamela have a custom heirloom engraved with my father’s handwriting?
Before I could voice the terrifying question forming in my chest, Zachary walked back into the kitchen, his laptop open.
"Ma'am... you said your husband's name is Christopher Vance, right?"
"Yes," I said, looking up from the gold bracelet.
Zachary turned the screen toward me. "He didn't go home. He just checked into the VIP lounge at the private terminal of San Diego International Airport twenty minutes ago. And look who just registered on the flight manifest with him."
On the screen was a passenger manifest for a chartered flight to Zurich, Switzerland.
Christopher Vance was listed.
Pamela Morris was listed.
May you like
And below them was a third name that made the room spin violently out of focus: Leo Vance, age 6.
I stared at the screen, paralyzed once more. Christopher and I didn't have a child. I had spent seven painful years believing we were infertile.
