Chapter 3 - The Pulse in the Dark
I stepped toward the open coffin, my chest heaving.
My mother’s hand suddenly shot out, her fingers gripping my wrist with surprising, iron strength.
"Don't look too closely, Ethan," she whispered, her voice tightening slightly. "Remember her the way she was when she was healthy."
I violently pulled my arm free from her grip.
"Don't touch me."
I leaned over the satin pillow.
Claire looked completely peaceful. Her long, dark hair had been carefully arranged in waves around her pale face. Her eyelids were gently closed.
Both of her hands rested folded across her swollen, eight-month belly.
I reached down with a trembling hand and touched her cheek.
Cool.
But not cold.
Something immediately felt wrong to my senses.
Before I entered the commercial construction management business years ago, I had served four years as an emergency medical technician.
I knew what a dead body felt like. I knew the unmistakable, heavy chill of rigor mortis and cellular death.
And Claire didn't feel dead.
I gently moved her dark hair away from the left side of her neck.
Hidden just beneath her earlobe was a small, dark purple bruise—and beside it, a tiny red puncture mark.
"What happened here?" I demanded.
"She... she fell in the hallway before the ambulance arrived," my mother said quickly, her posture stiffening.
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"What ambulance, Evelyn? Which company?"
Nathan's expression hardened into a glare. "You're grieving, Ethan! Stop interrogating your own family like a detective!"
