I did not have proof.

I had something that in an ER matters just as much and gets ignored just as often: the certainty of a person who has seen this a thousand times and knows, in her hands, when the account she is being given does not fit the patient in front of her.

And then there was Damon.

My son-in-law.

Tessa’s husband.

The man who had, only hours before, cornered me in a hallway and told me, in a voice of soft steel, that there would be no autopsy — that he had already arranged to have my daughter cremated, right after the service, that very afternoon.

Chapter 3 — No Autopsy