The silence that followed the opening of the casket was more deafening than Eleanor’s scream. It was a vacuum that sucked the air out of the Savannah afternoon, leaving the mourners gasping. The sunlight, harsh and unforgiving, illuminated the scene inside the white silk lining.
Chloe lay there, her face a mask of porcelain pale, but her posture was not that of a woman who had found peace. Her body was contorted, her shoulder hiked up as if she had been trying to turn over in a space too small for a living soul. But it was her hand—that pale, slender hand now dangling over the edge of the mahogany—that told the true story. The fingernails were jagged, raw, and caked with dried blood and white splinters from the interior lid.
Eleanor didn’t scream this time. She made a sound like a wounded animal, a low, guttural moan as she reached out to take the scrap of paper from Chloe’s death-grip.
“Don’t touch that!” Adam’s voice cracked like a whip. He lunged forward, his face no longer pale but a frantic, mottled purple. “It’s… it’s a contagion! The doctors said she died of an embolism, there could be fluids, Eleanor, get back!”
But Eleanor was faster. Years of gardening and hard work had left her limbs stronger than they looked. She snatched the paper and stepped back, her eyes burning into her son’s.
“Contagion?” Eleanor spat the word like venom. “You didn’t want a viewing because of a ‘contagion,’ Adam? Or because you knew she wasn’t dead when you nailed this shut?”
The crowd erupted into a chaotic symphony of gasps and prayers. The pastor, trembling, moved closer to the coffin. He looked at the underside of the lid that had just been lifted. There, etched into the expensive white satin, were long, frantic scratch marks.
“Lord have mercy,” the pastor whispered, crossing himself. “She was clawing. She was clawing to get out.”
Eleanor smoothed the crumpled paper. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she read the shaky, frantic handwriting. It wasn’t a suicide note. It wasn’t a goodbye. It was a medical record—a ripped-off corner of a hospital chart, stained with a single drop of dark blood.
DR. VANCE. OCTOBER 12. INDUCED COMA. NO FETAL HEARTBEAT RECORDED ON CHART (FORGED). BABY IS ALIVE. HE IS TAKING HIM TO THE CREEK HOUSE.
The paper fluttered in Eleanor’s trembling hand. She looked at Adam. He wasn’t looking at the coffin anymore. He was looking at the gate of the cemetery, his hand twitching toward the car keys in his pocket.
