Chapter 4 - I WALKED INTO MY OWN FUNERAL
Victor stood beside my empty casket with Serena ten feet away.
She wore a black dress and held a tissue against dry eyes.
The chapel overflowed with white flowers, mountain photographs, and people who believed my husband had lost his wife and unborn son in a tragic accident.
Victor’s mother sat in the front pew, shaking with grief.
When the pastor invited him to speak, Victor walked to the pulpit.
“Elena was the center of my life,” he began.
I entered through the rear doors.
The sound of my cane striking the stone floor stopped him.
Every person in the chapel turned.
I wore a dark blue dress beneath my winter coat. My face was bruised, my wrist was braced, and my body was still heavy with pregnancy.
Adrian walked beside me, but he did not touch me.
I wanted to enter on my own feet.
Someone screamed.
Victor gripped the pulpit.
Serena stood so fast that her chair overturned.
“Elena?” Victor whispered.
His mother covered her mouth.
I walked down the aisle toward the empty casket.
Victor stepped away from the pulpit.
“This is a miracle.”
He tried to smile.
The expression died before it formed.
I stopped in front of him.
“You told them you watched me fall.”
“I did.”
“You told police you tried to reach me.”
“I did.”
“You told the insurance company I was dead before the rescue team reached the cliff.”
The room shifted.
People looked from Victor to Serena.
He raised his hands.
“She’s confused. She has suffered a severe head injury.”
That was his final strategy.
If he could not bury my body, he would bury my credibility.
I turned toward the chapel’s projection screen.
Adrian’s investigator activated it.
A security recording appeared.
Victor and Serena sat inside a hotel bar two nights before the mountain trip.
The audio was clear.
“When the policy pays,” Serena said, “we leave the country.”
Victor reached across the table and touched her hand.
“It has to look accidental.”
Several people gasped.
Serena ran toward the side door.
A detective blocked her path.
Victor stared at the screen.
“That recording is manipulated.”
A second file appeared.
Serena’s Cross Atlantic access logs showed that she had opened Adrian’s confidential family investigation seven years earlier.
A third file displayed emails between her and Victor.
One line appeared in enlarged text.
MARRY HER FIRST. THE TRUST CHANGES WHEN SHE HAS A CHILD.
I looked at Victor.
He had encouraged me to stop birth control.
He had celebrated when I became pregnant.
He had painted the nursery himself.
All the time, he was waiting for my child to activate a clause in Adrian’s trust.
Serena began crying.
“He said no one would get hurt.”
Victor turned on her.
“Shut up.”
The cruelty in his voice exposed more than any document.
Serena looked at the detectives.
“He pushed her,” she said. “I saw him do it.”
Victor lunged toward her.
Two officers grabbed him before he reached the aisle.
The chapel erupted.
His mother sobbed. One of his business partners began shouting. The pastor stepped away from the pulpit, stunned.
Victor twisted against the officers.
“Elena, tell them! Tell them I loved you!”
I looked at the empty casket.
He had chosen the flowers. Selected my photograph. Written a speech about devotion while I lay injured in a hospital bed.
“You loved what my death could buy.”
The officers pulled him toward the doors.
He shouted my name until the chapel swallowed his voice.
Serena was led out behind him.
I stood beside my own casket with one hand over my baby.
The people who had come to mourn me did not know whether to sit, leave, apologize, or stare.
I turned to Victor’s mother.
She looked broken.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I believed her.
But I had learned that another person’s grief did not require me to carry them.
I faced the chapel.
May you like
“This funeral is over.”
Then I walked back up the aisle alive.
