Chapter 1 — Waking

“We haven’t even buried her yet, and you’re already dividing up her things.”

That was my mother’s voice, and it was the first thing I heard as I woke up inside my own coffin.

I did not open my eyes right away.

I couldn’t, at first — my body felt very far away from me, as if it belonged to someone else and I was only borrowing the use of its ears.

I smelled lilies, thick and sweet and everywhere.

My tongue was dry as paper.

There was a deep ringing somewhere behind my eyes.

When I tried to move my fingers, they barely answered.

On my chest lay a heavy silver cross I had never in my life chosen to wear.

The lid above me was not fully closed.

A thin blade of warm light came through a gap near my face.

It took several seconds — some of the worst I have ever lived — to understand where I was.

Then the sounds arranged themselves into a place I knew: the slow tick of my mother’s old mahogany clock, the cream lace curtains, the murmur of older women praying.

It was my mother’s living room in Milwaukee.

But there was no holiday, no dinner.

There were scented candles and stale coffee and, propped among white flowers where I could not quite see it, a framed photograph of my own face.

They were holding a wake.