Chapter Three: Something Wrong
It was a small movement — almost nothing. Carol lifted her head from Thomas’s chest and turned back toward the coffin. She wasn’t sure why. Some instinct. Some refusal, maybe, to let go. She wanted one more look at her daughter’s face.
She leaned forward over the edge of the coffin.
She looked at Maya’s face — the pale cheeks, the dark lashes, the lips slightly parted — and then her gaze dropped, almost by accident, to Maya’s chest.
She stared.
She blinked.
She stared again.
“Wait,” she said. Her voice was very quiet. Confused.
“Carol — ” Thomas touched her arm.
“Wait.” She held up one hand without looking at him. She leaned closer. Six inches from her daughter’s face now. Her own breath fogging faintly in the cool air of the room. She watched Maya’s chest. She watched it very carefully.
And she saw it.
The faintest, almost imperceptible rise. A barely-there fall. So slight it could have been a trick of the light, a trembling of her own exhausted vision — except that it happened again. And again.
Carol’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Her chest,” she breathed. “Her chest is — she’s — ” She spun around. “She’s breathing.“
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.
For one long second, nobody moved.
Then Thomas said, “What?”
“She’s breathing, Thomas, look — ” Carol grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, pressing close to the coffin. “Look at her chest, look — “
“Carol, sweetheart, you’re exhausted, you haven’t slept — “
“Look at it!“
He looked.
The room had gone completely silent. People near the front began to lean in, craning their necks, exchanging uncertain glances. Joelle took a step forward. Danny moved to the other side of the coffin, his face suddenly very alert.
“Mom,” he said slowly. “Mom, I think I see it too.”
“She’s alive!” Carol’s scream was nothing like her earlier weeping — it was sharp and electric and it brought everyone in the room to their feet. “Oh God, she’s alive, someone call — call someone, call an ambulance — SHE’S BREATHING!“
For three full seconds the room was pure chaos — people shouting, someone knocking over a floral arrangement, a woman in the back fainting into the arms of the man beside her. Half the room was frozen in shock. The other half was already moving.
Danny had his phone out. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped it, picked it up, dropped it again. Joelle grabbed her own phone. Thomas leaned over his daughter’s body, pressing two trembling fingers to the side of her neck.
He went very still.
“There’s a pulse,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. “Carol — there is a pulse — “
Carol made a sound that wasn’t a word. She took her daughter’s cold hand in both of hers and held it against her face and stood there, shaking, while the room erupted around her.
