didn’t.”
Adrian moved closer. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Noah looked at him, and for the first time in three days, anger moved through the fog. “Harder for who?”
The attendant glanced between them, then unlocked the casket latch.
The sound was small.
It split Noah open.
When the lid rose, Clara appeared beneath a white funeral sheet, her face pale but strangely gentle. Someone had brushed her dark hair across one shoulder. Someone had placed her wedding ring back on her finger. Someone had powdered the bruising near her temple until it was barely visible.
Noah leaned over her, and his breath shook.
“Clara,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He wanted to touch her face but could not. He wanted to climb into the casket and refuse the world. Instead, his hand drifted to the curve of her stomach, as it had every night for months when their daughter became most restless after midnight.
His palm settled over the sheet.
Something pushed back.
Noah froze.
For a moment, his mind refused to understand. The chapel lights hummed overhead. Rain ticked against glass. Vivian muttered something to Adrian. The attendant looked down respectfully.
Then the movement came again.
Slow. Firm. unmistakable.
Not the shifting of fabric. Not a tremor in Noah’s own hand.
A kick.
Noah jerked backward, then slammed both hands onto the casket edges.
“Stop,” he said.
The attendant blinked. “Sir?”
“Stop everything.”
Adrian stepped forward. “Noah—”
“The baby moved.”
Silence dropped so hard it seemed to empty the room.
Vivian stood. “That is grief talking.”
Noah bent again and pressed his hand to Clara’s belly. He waited, breath trapped in his chest. A few seconds passed. Then, beneath the sheet, Clara’s abdomen tightened and shifted under his palm.
The attendant saw it too.
His face went white.
“Call an ambulance,” Noah said.
No one moved.
He lifted his head and shouted so loudly the lilies trembled in their stands. “Call an ambulance now!”
The next five minutes became chaos.
A younger employee ran for the office phone. Vivian demanded that everyone calm down. Adrian seized Noah’s shoulder and tried to pull him away from the casket, but Noah shoved him so hard he staggered into the aisle.
“Touch me again,” Noah said, “and I swear you’ll need your own doctor.”
The attendant locked the casket wheels. Two mourners near the back began praying. Someone knocked over a vase. Water spread across the floor like a dark stain.
When the first paramedics entered with their equipment, Noah would not step aside until one of them said, “We can’t help unless you give us room.”
He moved six inches.
A doctor arrived moments later from St. Anselm’s Hospital across the street, still wearing a white coat over green scrubs. He was in his sixties, with silver hair and sharp, tired eyes.
“I’m Dr. Ellis,” he said. “What happened?”
“Her baby moved,” Noah said.
Vivian cut in. “My son-in-law is distraught. My daughter passed away three days ago. This is inappropriate and cruel.”
Dr. Ellis did not answer her. He placed two fingers against Clara’s neck, then checked her pupils. His face gave nothing away. Then he took a Doppler device from a paramedic and pressed the probe against Clara’s abdomen.
Static filled the
