Chapter 1 - THE ARM THAT MOVED
The first person to notice Thomas Clarke was still warm was his eight-year-old daughter.
Everyone in the funeral home had accepted that Thomas was dead. Madison had not. For six hours she stood beside the open coffin, staring at his face as if she were waiting for him to finish a sentence.
“Sweetheart,” Rachel whispered for the fourth time, “come sit with me.”
Madison shook her head.
“He doesn’t like being alone.”
Rachel’s throat tightened. “Honey, Dad can’t feel alone anymore.”
Madison looked at her with a strange little frown.
“You don’t know that.”
The words irritated Aunt Lorraine, who had spent the entire day organizing flowers, food, and people’s grief like items on a checklist.
“She’s in shock,” Lorraine muttered. “Someone should get her away from the casket.”
But when the room finally emptied near nine that night, Madison did something no one expected.
She climbed in.
“Madison!” her cousin Evan shouted.
Rachel spun around just in time to see her daughter curl against Thomas’s chest, arms wrapped tightly around him.
People rushed forward.
Then everybody stopped.
Thomas’s right arm had been folded across his stomach all evening.
Now it rested along Madison’s back.
Not hanging.
Not fallen.
Resting there.
Lorraine went white.
“No,” she whispered. “That hand was not there.”
Rachel stepped closer.
“Madison, get out. Right now.”
Madison didn’t move.
“He doesn’t want me scared.”
Rachel reached for her—and Madison lifted her head.
Her eyes were huge.
“He’s warm.”
The room went silent. Rachel pressed two fingers to Thomas’s neck. Nothing. She moved them slightly—and felt one faint beat, then another.
“Call 911!” Rachel screamed.
The funeral director stumbled backward.
“That’s impossible.”
Thomas’s fingers twitched against Madison’s dress.
May you like
And from inside the coffin came a sound no dead man was supposed to make.
A breath.
