I’m not dead. I’m alive.
Bella stares at her phone, as furious at the person behind the texts as she is at herself.
There’s a part of her that wants to believe that Sam isn’t really dead. There are moments when her brain refuses to grasp that it had actually happened. When she wonders whether it had all been a terrible misunderstanding, a delusion, nightmare, because any of those possibilities seem more plausible than the shocking reality.
How could her strong, capable husband have gotten so terribly sick, without warning? How could he have vanished from her life in a matter of weeks?
Three months from diagnosis to death, spanning a season. Autumn.
It had always been her favorite time of year, especially when she was married and living cozily in Bedford with Sam and Max. Pumpkins on porches; vibrant mums in borders and baskets; a glorious foliage canopy overhead; the air thick with the scent of ripe fruit and fallen leaves and woodsmoke.
She’d seen it so differently when Sam was dying. Everything was dying. Overnight, vibrant leaves were withered brown, strewn across the landscape amid rotting apples; flowerbeds frost-blackened; mornings cold and dark; days ever shorter, days running out.
‘Mom?’
Max’s voice crashes into her memory, and she looks up from her phone to see him beside her.
‘Can we?’ he asks. ‘Please?’
‘Can you what?’
‘Can me and Jiffy play with the dogs outside?’
‘No, it’s raining.’
‘Jiffy says dogs love rainy days, right, Jiffy?’
‘Yep, they do, Bella. Jelly’s most favorite thing to do is roll around in mud puddles. And Max and me love to jump in them and pretend we’re army guys landing in the ocean.’
‘Yeah, it’s so fun. Can we, Mom?’
Her phone vibrates with a new text from Unknown.
I needed you to think I was dead.
Her jaw drops.
‘Can we, Bella?’
She stares at the phone.
I needed you to think I was dead.
‘Mom, we want—’
‘Bella, can we—’
‘No!’
It comes out far more sharply than she ever speaks to them, and she glances up to find them gaping at her.
‘Sorry, guys, I just … I, um … Why don’t you go watch Ninja Zombie Battle on TV for a while? I … I have to do a few things.’
‘Yes!’ The boys fist-bump and race into the back parlor before she can remind them to clear their cereal bowls from the table. Ordinarily, she’d call them back to do it, or she’d do it herself before leaving the kitchen to hurry upstairs. And ordinarily, she’d check on the guests in the breakfast room to make sure everyone has what they need.
But ordinarily, she isn’t in the midst of a text exchange with someone purporting to be her dead husband.
Rather, her husband who needed her to think he was dead?
At the top of the stairs, she sees that she’d left the door to the Rose Room ajar when she rushed out to confront Jiffy.
Chance is perched on the threshold, as if she’d been guarding it in Bella’s absence. She greets Bella with an unblinking stare, or maybe a reproachful one.
‘It’s OK, sweetie,’ Bella tells her softly. ‘Everything’s OK.’
The cat follows her into the room.
She closes the door behind her and sits on the bed. Chance hops up beside her. Not settling in for a nap, not nudging and purring, not wanting to play. Just there, warm, solid, protective, watchful, perhaps wary. As if she knows about the texts from Unknown that are wreaking havoc on Bella’s emotions.
She rereads the latest message yet again.
Of course this isn’t from Sam, because Sam isn’t alive, although …
His being alive would provide a non-supernatural explanation for the airport, and the necklace.
A non-supernatural explanation that makes no sense whatsoever.
Still, Bella painstakingly types out a question with a trembly thumb: Why would you do that? She hits Send before she can change her mind.
The answer is prompt.
I got into trouble.
Another message pops up before she can respond – not that she knows what to say.
I borrowed money from the wrong people.
‘What are you talking about?’ she mutters. ‘And how are you writing these so quickly on your phone?’
A lot of money.
Messages stack the window, one on top of another, so rapid-fire that he’s either typing on a laptop, or dictating them.
I couldn’t pay it back.
They were going to kill me.
It was the only way out.
‘What?’ she whispers. ‘What are you saying?’
She waits for more. It doesn’t come.
After a long pause, she clicks on the window. Her cursor blinks there, ready for her to start typing, as if this were an ordinary exchange.
As if she believes that the man she’d loved – the man who had been terrible at keeping secrets – had kept one so monumental, faking his death like a character in a movie.
Had Kevin Bacon ever portrayed someone who’d done that? Maybe that’s—
Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Not if that message had come from Sam’s Spirit, as Odelia had said, and not Sam, still alive.
Does any of this make sense?
You can’t solve a puzzle without all the pieces.
Bella has to keep him talking, whoever he is. She replaces the flashing cursor with a question.
What do you mean?
The response comes quickly.
We faked my death.
She flashes back to the events that have haunted her for nearly two years now.
The sudden onset of his symptoms – could he have faked them?
The diagnosis – had Dr Stacey Fischer been in on it? Was she even an oncologist?
The tests and hospitalizations – had they been elaborately staged?
Sam’s transformation into a gaunt, ravaged shadow of himself – had it been an act?
That awful last day at his deathbed …
‘I’ll be with you … Promise me you’ll … stay … strong …’
‘I promise.’
Those were the last two words she’d ever said to him.
Until now, if she were to believe that he’s alive and texting.
We faked my death.
‘No. No, no, no!’
The man she’d loved would never have allowed her – allowed their child – to endure the worst pain imaginable.
Jaw set, she asks, Who is we?
She waits for a response.
I can’t share that.
Stoic, Bella repeats the question.
I can’t tell you. They saved my life.
You can’t tell me? I’m your wife! she responds, as if it really is Sam sending these messages.
It can’t be. It isn’t.
I’m so sorry. I’ll explain in person.
Really? In person? OK, now this is getting ridiculous.
When? she asks. Where? How?
First promise me you won’t tell anyone.
Why?
For your own safety. And Max’s.
She shakes her head. It’s one thing for this person to toy with her. But to hint at danger, and invoke her son’s name?
‘No,’ she mutters. ‘No way.’
Bella is no longer interested in disengaging and walking away. Now she wants – needs – to know who’s behind this.
They’re watching. They’re dangerous.
Who?
‘Wait, I know … you can’t tell me,’ she says.
I can’t tell you.
‘Right. Of course you can’t.’
They found out I’m alive.
He’s still typing. She waits.
They want their money, Bella.
More typing.
If this is going where she suspects it is …
Can you help me?
Ah. So she’d been right.
Help you how?
No hesitation in the reply: I need to give them the money.
‘Of course you do,’ she mutters, and asks, how much?
Waiting for the response, she starts taking screenshots, capturing the messages all the way back to the beginning and saving them to her photos file. She has a feeling Luther is going to want to see them when she tells him about this.
A text pops up in response to her last question.
200.
Seeing the figure, she’s taken aback.
Two hundred dollars?
She spells it out, just to be absolutely clear, though she already knows what’s coming.
200K.
There it is. Two hundred thousand dollars. Precisely the amount of the check Millicent had given her.
Lily Dale. No coincidences. Right.
This isn’t just kids – not even that bully, Kevin Beamer – playing a harmless prank. A kid wouldn’t ask for 200K.
Someone has been snooping around Valley View and knows about the check.
It’s her own fault, she supposes, for leaving it right out in the open, under the paperweight in the study. At least now it’s safely put away in her private quarters – which doesn’t do her much good if she doesn’t close and lock the door to the Rose Room.
But there’s not much worth stealing in here. Her wallet, which she keeps in the top drawer of her bureau, holds her ID, her maxed-out credit cards, and very little cash.
The only thing of value in this room would be her gold and diamond wedding and engagement rings. A year into widowhood, she’d taken them off and put them away, thinking that she might one day give them to a daughter-in-law or granddaughter.
She hurries over to the bureau and opens the lid of her jewelry box. The envelope is right on top where she’d left it. There’s the ring box, and yes, the rings are inside. Relieved, she puts it back …
Only to realize that something just as precious is missing: her tourmaline necklace.