Chapter 5: The Man Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
I read the name again.
*Michael Reed.*
My first husband.
My hands began to shake so badly that the paper rustled between my fingers.
Michael had died eleven years earlier in a car accident outside Nashville. At least, that was what I had been told.
We had been married for less than two years when his car went off a rain-slicked highway. The police said the vehicle had caught fire. His wallet and identification had been recovered, and a funeral home had handled the arrangements.
There had been no open casket.
I had been twenty-six years old, newly widowed, and so devastated that I barely remembered the weeks that followed.
Daniel had been my friend at the time.
He had brought groceries to my apartment, sat beside me through sleepless nights, and promised I would never have to face the world alone.
Two years later, I married him.
Now my sister was standing in her living room, holding a baby conceived through a legal agreement bearing Michael's name.
I looked up.
“Where did you get this?””
Olivia wiped her cheeks.
“From the clinic.””
“Michael has been dead for eleven years.””
“I know what you were told.””
“What I was told?””
My voice rose so sharply that Noah stirred in his bassinet.
Olivia hurried to soothe him.
“Please, Sarah. You'll wake him.””
I stared at her.
“You're worried about waking a baby while I'm trying to understand why my dead husband is listed on a fertility agreement?””
She flinched.
Jessica quietly moved toward the bassinet and checked that Noah was settled.
I held up the document.
“Explain this. Now.””
Olivia sat on the edge of the sofa.
“Daniel and I didn't plan to have a child together at first. It happened, and we panicked. We knew you would never forgive us.””
“You knew I would never forgive you, so you decided to make everything worse?””
“No. Daniel said there might be a way to protect the baby.””
“By using Michael's name?””
Olivia nodded miserably.
“He told me Michael had stored genetic material at a fertility clinic before he died.””
I couldn't speak.
Michael and I had talked about having children. During our marriage, he had undergone medical testing after a health scare, and I remembered him mentioning a specialist in Nashville.
But I had never known he had stored anything.
“Why would the clinic give you access to his records?””
“They didn't give me access. Daniel did.””
I turned toward the doorway, where Jessica had gone pale.
“Did you know about this?””
“No,” she said immediately.
“I swear.””
Olivia continued.
“Daniel told me the clinic had made a mistake years ago. He said there was an old donor agreement and that Michael had consented to helping couples who couldn't conceive.””
I looked down at the paperwork.
“That doesn't explain why my name is on the guardianship agreement.””
“Because Daniel said you were the closest thing Michael had to family.””
I felt sick.
“I'm his widow.””
“I know.””
“And you thought that made me a convenient person to raise a child who was actually yours and Daniel's?””
Olivia began to sob.
“I didn't know what else to do.””
“You could have told me the truth.””
“Daniel said you would take Noah away from me.””
“Why would I do that?””
“Because he told me you were planning to divorce him and claim everything you could.””
I stared at her.
Daniel had apparently been telling each of us a different story, turning our fears into weapons against one another.
I walked to the window and looked out at the parking lot.
A black SUV sat beneath a streetlight.
For a moment, I thought it was Daniel's car.
Then the driver's door opened.
A man stepped out.
He was tall, wearing a dark coat, with one hand tucked into his pocket. He walked toward the apartment building with the calm, deliberate pace of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
Olivia saw him through the window.
All the color drained from her face.
“No,” she whispered.
I turned.
“What?””
She backed away from the glass.
“He wasn't supposed to come here.””
The doorbell rang.
Jessica moved toward the entrance, but Olivia grabbed her wrist.
“Don't open it.””
The bell rang again.
Then a man's voice came through the door.
“Olivia? It's Michael.””
The room went silent.
I stopped breathing.
No.
It wasn't possible.
Michael was dead.
I had stood beside his grave. I had watched the rain fall across the polished stone. I had spent years visiting that cemetery on the anniversary of his death, bringing flowers to a man I believed I would never see again.
Yet the voice on the other side of the door was unmistakable.
I moved toward it.
Olivia caught my arm.
“Sarah, please don't.””
I pulled free.
“Get out of my way.””
I unlocked the door.
The man standing in the hallway had a small scar above his left eyebrow, the same scar Michael had gotten when he fell off his bicycle as a teenager.
His hair was grayer. His face was older. There were lines around his eyes that hadn't existed the last time I saw him.
But I knew him.
He looked at me, and his expression crumpled.
“Sarah.””
My knees nearly gave out.
I gripped the doorframe.
“You're dead.””
He swallowed.
“I know.””
“You're dead.””
“I know what they told you.””
I slapped him.
The sound echoed through the hallway.
Michael didn't defend himself. He simply stood there, his cheek reddening, his eyes fixed on mine.
“You let me bury you,” I whispered.
His face twisted with pain.
“I didn't know they had gone that far.””
“Who?””
He glanced over my shoulder.
His eyes settled on Olivia.
Then on the sleeping baby.
Finally, he looked back at me.
“Daniel.””
I felt the room tilt.
“What does Daniel have to do with your death?””
Michael stepped inside and closed the door.
“Everything.””
Olivia began crying harder.
Michael looked at her.
“Did you tell her about the agreement?””
“She found it herself.””
He exhaled slowly.
Then he reached into his coat and removed a folded newspaper clipping.
The headline described the highway accident that had supposedly killed him eleven years earlier.
But someone had drawn a red circle around a paragraph near the bottom.
It stated that the body recovered from the vehicle had never been conclusively identified through dental records or DNA.
I looked at him.
“Then whose body was it?””
Michael's jaw tightened.
“That is the part I came here to tell you.””
May you like
He placed the clipping on the table.
“The man who died in that car was Daniel's older brother.””
