Two years ago, Elsie was staying with Adrian’s cousin at a lake three states away for a week in the summer — a trip Adrian had arranged, a trip I’d been strangely uninvited from because of a work deadline he insisted I couldn’t miss.
There had been a call.
An accident on the water.
A closed casket, because Adrian said I shouldn’t see, because he’d handle it, because he loved me too much to let me look.
He handled everything.
Every form. Every arrangement. Every conversation with the funeral home.
I had spent two years walking past a bedroom I couldn’t enter, grieving a daughter at a grave I visited every Sunday.
“Mrs. Vance,” Detective Okafor said gently. “Did you ever see your daughter’s body?”
“No,” I whispered. The same word I’d said in a different story, a lifetime of women saying no to that question because a man told them it would be easier. “He said it would break me.”
