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 had promised myself, on the drive over, that I would stay calm, and mostly I did.
But that was the moment my calm cracked, because the necklace was the tell that undid her whole performance of remorse.
A person overwhelmed by a horror she’d been tricked into does not put on the victim’s jewelry an hour later and wear it comfortably at the victim’s wake.
That is not the behavior of someone who thought I’d merely fallen asleep.
That is the behavior of someone who had already, somewhere in herself, moved me firmly into the past tense, sorted my things, and begun trying on the life that would come after me.
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