Chapter 1

The Second Urn

Three days after my biopsy came back malignant, I booked a boat to carry my ashes into Casco Bay.

The woman at Harbor Light Memorials had spoken gently, as if gentleness could make the word cancer less sharp.

“You don’t need to choose a date yet, Mrs. Vale. Preplanning simply means your family won’t have to guess.”

My family had been guessing about me for years.

My parents guessed that my marriage was happy. My husband guessed I would still be waiting whenever he came home. Everyone guessed I had time.

I paid the deposit and chose the private sunrise charter.

Then I went upstairs, pulled every white dress from my closet, and dropped them into the empty bathtub.

White linen. White silk. White cashmere.

Celeste Rowan had worn white in almost every photograph Adrian kept of her. Three years of marriage had taught me to buy the colors he looked at longest.

That afternoon, I finally chose green.

I changed into an old emerald sweater my mother had knitted for me, fed the white dresses into black trash bags, and took off my wedding ring.

The ring hit the kitchen garbage disposal with a small metallic click.

I flipped the switch.

The machine screamed once. When it stopped, the gold band was bent beyond recognition.

Upstairs, I filled the bathtub with hot water. I sat on the closed lid of the toilet with my prescription bottle in one hand and several pills resting in my palm.

I did not feel dramatic.

I felt tired.

My phone rang before I could make another decision.

“Mrs. Vale?” the memorial coordinator asked. “I’m sorry to bother you again. Your husband called about your Casco Bay reservation.”

For a moment, I thought Adrian had found my confirmation email and understood.

That hope survived for perhaps half a second.

“Mr. Vale said there will be another set of remains,” she continued. “He asked whether we could use your charter for both memorials. The date is important to the other family.”

The pills dug crescents into my damp palm.

“Whose remains?”

Silence.

Then, carefully, “Celeste Rowan’s.”

I laughed.

It was not a sane sound.

Adrian had spent three years giving his dead first love every place that belonged to his living wife. Holidays. Dinners. The passenger seat of his car. The locked drawer in his study.

Now he wanted my funeral, too.

“Did he tell you I was already dead?” I asked.

“No. He said you were planning far in advance.”

“Cancel the charter.”

“Mrs. Vale, the deposit is—”

“Cancel it. And email me a record of his requested change.”

My voice was so calm that I almost believed it belonged to someone else.

I ended the call, looked at the pills in my hand, and saw the shape of the last three years: Adrian deciding, Adrian explaining, Adrian telling me what I could survive.

I put the pills back in the bottle.

Then I called the crisis line number the oncology nurse had written on the back of my discharge folder.

“I’m afraid I might hurt myself,” I said when someone answered. “And I need help before I change my mind.”

By midnight, I was in a curtained emergency room bay with an IV in my arm and a hospital social worker sitting beside me.

Adrian arrived at two in the morning.

He wore a charcoal suit and a white rosebud in his lapel. He had attended Celeste’s annual memorial dinner before coming to collect his wife from the emergency department.

He placed a paper bag on the tray beside my bed.

“The Rowans had leftovers,” he said. “You should eat something.”

Inside was a slice of lemon cake. A small card was taped to the lid.

In Loving Memory of Celeste.

I pushed it away.

Adrian’s mouth tightened. He was thirty-five, handsome in the polished, distant way that made strangers assume he was kind. Dark hair. Gray eyes. A voice trained to make dismissals sound reasonable.

“The hospital said you had pills.”

“I called for help.”

“After booking a funeral boat.”

“A memorial charter.”

“You’re twenty-nine, Willa.” He loosened his tie and glanced toward the hall. “People preplan when they’re old or terminal. You did it because you knew I would find out.”

I studied his face.

He had never noticed the freckle near my left eyebrow. He had once asked me to cover it because Celeste’s skin had been flawless.

“The company called me,” I said. “You tried to put her ashes on my boat.”

“It was one charter.”

“It was mine.”

“Celeste’s remains have been sitting in a funeral home for three years.” His voice hardened. “Her mother has never been able to let them go. You picked the best sunrise route in June, and there are no other private openings.”

“So you offered them my place.”

“You don’t need it now.”

The monitor beside me measured my heart with obedient green flashes.

“How do you know?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t turn this into another contest with a dead woman.”

“I may die.”

The words sat between us.

Adrian looked at me then. Not at the IV. Not at the hospital bracelet. At me.

For one breath, I thought he had finally heard me.

“Then don’t do it during Celeste’s memorial week,” he said. “Eleanor has suffered enough.”

Something inside me went very still.

The social worker returned with discharge papers and stopped when she saw my face.

“Mrs. Vale, do you feel safe going home with your husband?”

Adrian looked offended by the question.

I looked at the white rose on his chest.

“No,” I said.

It was the first honest answer I had given in years.

I asked the hospital to call a car and spent the night at a hotel near the Old Port. Adrian did not follow me. He sent one message at 2:47 a.m.

You embarrassed me in front of the staff.

By sunrise, I had canceled three things: the memorial charter, the florist, and the joint credit card Adrian used whenever Eleanor needed something.

Then I opened the patient portal and downloaded every medical record to a private folder.

INVASIVE DUCTAL CARCINOMA.

HIGH GRADE.

LYMPH NODE INVOLVEMENT SUSPECTED.

I had printed the first pathology report the day it arrived. I had carried it home in a sealed envelope and placed it in the center of Adrian’s desk.

When I returned to the house that morning, the envelope was still there.

Unopened.

Adrian’s cold coffee cup sat on top of my name.