He looked up, clearly startled to see someone back there.
“Ma’am, this area is restricted—”
“My husband is in the viewing room,” I interrupted, my voice sounding strange and hollow to my own ears. “Someone put something in his casket. I need to see who it was.”
I held up the note as evidence.
“I need to know who placed this there.”
He hesitated, uncertainty crossing his face. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to—”
“I paid for that room. He’s my husband. Please help me.”
Something in my expression must have convinced him. He sighed deeply and turned to his monitors, pulling up the chapel feed. He rewound the footage, then fast-forwarded through it.
People flickered across the screen in accelerated motion. Hugs, flowers, hands touching the casket in final farewells.
“Slow it down,” I said, leaning closer.
A woman in a black dress stepped up to the casket alone. Dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. She glanced around the room cautiously, then slipped her hand under Greg’s folded hands, tucked something there, and patted his chest before stepping back.
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
Susan Miller.
His so-called “work lifesaver.” She owned the supply company that used to deliver materials to his office. I’d met her maybe three or four times at company events over the years. Thin, efficient, professional. Always laughing just a little too enthusiastically at jokes that weren’t particularly funny.
At this moment, frozen on the security footage, she was the woman sneaking a note into my husband’s coffin.
I took a picture of the paused frame with my phone, my hands surprisingly steady now.
“Thank you so much,” I told Luis quietly.
Then I walked back to the chapel with a sense of grim purpose.
Confronting the woman who violated my husband’s resting place
Susan was standing near the back of the room, talking to two women from Greg’s office. She held a crumpled tissue in her hand, her eyes red-rimmed, performing grief like she was the tragic widow in some alternate reality.
When she saw me walking directly toward her, her expression flickered for just a fraction of a second. Guilt flashed across her features before she could control it.
I stopped right in front of her. “You left something in my husband’s casket.”
Susan blinked, feigning confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I watched you do it on the security cameras. Don’t lie to my face.”
People around us were starting to notice. Conversations were dying off. I could feel dozens of eyes turning toward us.
Susan’s voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “I just wanted to say goodbye to him.”
“Then you could’ve done it like every other person here. You deliberately hid it under his hands. Why would you do that?”
Her chin trembled. “I didn’t mean for you to find it.”
I pulled the note from my purse and held it up between us. “Who are the kids, Susan?”
The devastating accusation in front of everyone
For a long moment, I genuinely thought she might faint right there on the funeral home carpet. Then she gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“They’re his,” she said, her voice barely audible. “They’re Greg’s kids.”
A shocked murmur rippled through the people nearby. Someone actually gasped out loud.
“You’re telling me that my husband fathered children with you?” I asked, each word feeling like broken glass in my mouth.
She swallowed hard. “Two of them. A boy and a girl.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying,” she insisted, tears starting to stream down her face. “He didn’t want to hurt you with the truth. He specifically told me not to bring them to the funeral. He didn’t want you to see them or know about them.”
Every single word felt like it was aimed directly at my heart. I looked around at all the eyes fixed on us. Friends I’d known for decades. Neighbors. Greg’s coworkers. My private humiliation had suddenly become a very public spectacle.
I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t scream and fall apart in front of Greg’s casket, surrounded by all these people.
So I did the only thing I could manage.
