Chapter 1 - THE SUITCASES AT THE FUNERAL
The funeral-home doors swung open just as the director asked us to take our seats.
Vanessa entered first, pulling a silver suitcase behind her. My husband followed with an identical one.
Both of them were sunburned.
My sister pushed her oversized sunglasses onto her head and looked around the foyer at the white flowers, the framed portrait of her eight-year-old daughter, and the small coffin beneath the windows.
“Traffic from the airport,” she said breathlessly. “Where is Sofia?”
I kept one hand on the coffin because it was the only solid thing in the room.
“In there,” I said. “She died waiting for her mother.”
Vanessa stopped.
Daniel stepped between us, still wearing the blue floral shirt I had packed for the anniversary trip we canceled after Sofia’s last hospital admission.
“Emma, not here.”
Behind the coffin, our parents stood motionless. Dad’s face looked carved from stone. Mom covered her mouth with both hands.
Vanessa reached toward me.
“My phone was stolen. I didn’t know.”
Daniel nodded too quickly. “Mine too.”
I looked at their matching luggage, their resort clothes, and the pale marks around their wrists where plastic bands had blocked the sun.
A blue resort wristband stuck from Daniel’s suitcase pocket.
I pulled the matching band from the handbag Vanessa had dropped beside the doorway. The resort’s name was printed across both.
“Then why did you come home together?”
Daniel’s face tightened.
The second wristband slipped from his suitcase and landed at his feet.
No one spoke as the funeral director quietly closed the doors.
Sofia had collapsed at school three days earlier after complications from a congenital heart condition. The hospital called Vanessa fifty-nine times. I called sixty-eight.
Every call showed as delivered.
Sofia spent her final six hours holding my hand and asking when her mother would arrive.
“Tell her I wasn’t scared,” she whispered before the doctors asked me to step back.
Now Vanessa stared at the coffin as though it had been placed there to accuse her.
“I can explain,” she said.
“You had three days.”
Daniel reached for my arm. I moved away.
His phone vibrated inside his pocket.
He ignored it, but the screen lit long enough for me to see the sender.
Caribbean Escrow Services.
The preview contained four words:
Final transfer has failed.
Daniel shoved the phone away.
May you like
I had believed I was looking at an affair.
Standing beside Sofia’s coffin, I realized they had returned because something more than their secret trip had gone wrong.
