My pregnant daughter was in a coffin—and her husband showed up like it was a celebration. He walked in laughing with his mistress on his arm, her heels clicking on the church floor like applause. She even leaned close to me and murmured, “Looks like I win.” I swallowed my scream and stared at my daughter’s pale hands, still, forever. Then the lawyer stepped to the front, holding a sealed envelope. “Before the burial,” he announced, voice sharp, “the will must be read.” My son-in-law smirked—until the lawyer said the first name. And the smile slid right off his face.

I did not move a single muscle.

Evan’s gaze drifted lazily over the crowd until it locked onto mine. He detached himself from Celeste just long enough to stride to the front, adopting a mask of solemnity so quickly it made my stomach pitch.

“Margaret,” he said warmly, his voice dripping with the casual affection of a man greeting a distant aunt at a holiday cocktail party. “Terrible day.”

Celeste glided up beside him, tilting her chin. Her lips, painted a dark, bruised red, curved upward. She leaned in close, the sickeningly sweet scent of jasmine and vanilla radiating off her skin, choking the scent of the funeral lilies.

“Looks like I win,” she whispered, the words meant only for the hollow of my ear.

A wildfire ignited in my throat. For one blinding, agonizing second, I ceased to be a grieving mother. I was a tempest of pure violence. I wanted to tear that ridiculous netting from her hair. I wanted to seize Evan by his immaculate, starched collar and drag him across the stone. I wanted to scream until the vibrations shattered every pane of stained glass in the cathedral.

Rip them apart, my mind roared. Burn them down.

But then, my eyes darted back to the open casket. To Emma’s hands.

Still.

Forever.

The fire in my throat hardened into a block of ice. I swallowed the scream, pushing it down deep into my chest where it would serve a better purpose.

Evan was waiting for it. He expected the tears. He craved the chaotic scene. He wanted the shattered, hysterical old woman collapsing in a heap of unintelligible grief, so he could play the tragic, long-suffering widower for the inevitable swarm of cameras waiting on the church steps. Throughout their marriage, Evan had always believed I was insignificant simply because I spoke softly. He thought my graying hair equated to weakness. He thought my maternal grief would render me blind, deaf, and foolish.

He was spectacularly wrong on all three counts.

At the front of the altar, Mr. Halden, Emma’s attorney, stepped out from the heavy shadow of the pulpit. He was a thin, severe man with silver hair, possessing a demeanor as dry and unyielding as ancient parchment. Gripped tightly in his liver-spotted hands was a thick, ivory envelope with Emma’s looping handwriting scrawled across the front.

Evan’s manufactured smile instantly sharpened into a scowl of irritation.

“Is this theatricality really necessary right now, Arthur?” Evan demanded, his voice echoing too loudly off the vaulted ceiling. “My wife hasn’t even been put in the ground.”

Mr. Halden did not flinch. He slowly, deliberately pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“According to the precise legal stipulations of your late wife,” Mr. Halden announced, his voice carrying a metallic edge that instantly silenced the murmuring crowd, “before the burial rites can commence, the last will and testament must be read. Here. Before the congregation.”