“I want to verify it first,” he said, and then he changed the subject, and I let him, because I trusted him and assumed he would tell me when he was ready.

He never got the chance.

Two days later he was dead, or so a doctor had signed a paper saying, and his warning about his own brother sat in my chest like a stone I could not swallow, all through the wake, growing heavier with every hour my daughter refused to leave his side.

Chapter 3 — The White Sheet

The morning of his alleged death, Marcus had called me in a panic, his voice ragged, telling me that Mark had collapsed during a routine inspection inside one of their refrigerated warehouses.

By the time I reached the clinic, my husband was already lying beneath a white sheet.