They Held My Funeral While I Was Still Breathing. Then My Seven-Year-Old Nephew Looked Into the Coffin and Said, “Mommy, Aunt Madelyn Is Looking at Me”

“I trusted them.

Both of them, completely.” She came and sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand.

“Forgive me.

For years there were things that bothered me and I told myself I was imagining them.

The way Delilah always had to compete with you over the smallest things.

The way Christopher used to come around the house so often, before you two married, on the afternoons you weren’t home.

I told myself he was just trying hard to be part of the family.”