The funeral director called on a Tuesday morning and politely asked whether my family wanted to keep the same date for my service. I was standing in my kitchen pouring cereal for my children, very much alive, when he explained that my wife had already chosen the chapel, the hymn, the casket—and the week I was expected to die.
Chapter 1
At first, I assumed he had the wrong man. Small towns collect surnames the way old barns collect rust, and there were plenty of Parkers scattered across northern Wisconsin.
“My name is Daniel Parker,” I told the woman on the phone. “Nobody here has died.”
She hesitated. “Sir, the address is 814 Birch Street?”
I looked around my own kitchen. My nine-year-old daughter, Lucy, was reading the back of a cereal box while my six-year-old son, Ben, tried to balance a spoon on his nose.
“Yes.”
The woman covered the receiver, and after a moment an older man came on.
“Mr. Parker, this is Lawrence Hale. I own Northland Funeral Services. I apologize for the confusion. We’re transferring older files into a new computer system.”
“All right.”
“The arrangement isn’t for someone who has already passed.”
I waited.
“It’s a pre-need arrangement.”
“A prepaid funeral?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For who?”
His answer came carefully.
“For Daniel Robert Parker.”
The kitchen seemed to lose all sound.
I put one hand against the counter. Months earlier, when my unexplained dizzy spells began, I had done the same thing because the room had tilted beneath me. This time nothing moved. The cabinets stayed straight. The refrigerator hummed. Ben’s spoon hit the table.
Lucy looked up.
“Dad?”
I forced myself to breathe.
“Who arranged it?” I asked.
Mr. Hale paused. “The file lists the arranging party as spouse.”
My wife, Rebecca.
We had been married fifteen years.
“What date?”
“The chapel is reserved for Saturday, March seventh, at eleven.”
“That’s the funeral. What date did she say I would die?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“The anticipated date of need says late February.”
I turned toward the calendar beside the refrigerator.
The last weekend in February was seventeen days away.
Every year since my father died, I spent that weekend alone on Pinewater Lake. Dad had run fishing shacks there for thirty winters, and after his death I kept one old shack for myself. I would drive out before dawn on Friday, stay through Sunday, fish, drink terrible coffee from his dented steel cup, and come home smelling like propane and lake water.
Everyone in town knew about it.
Rebecca knew better than anyone.
Mr. Hale continued speaking.
“There’s also a diagnosis listed.”
“What diagnosis?”
“Glioblastoma.”
Brain cancer.
I almost laughed.
Three months earlier I had fainted at work. The emergency room had tested my heart, blood sugar, blood pressure, and half a dozen other things. Nothing alarming had been found.
There had been no brain tumor.
No prognosis.
No doctor telling me I had months to live.
“Who’s the physician?”
“Dr. Evan Marshall.”
Rebecca worked at Dr. Marshall’s clinic.
I hung up and looked at my children.
Ben was eating now. Lucy was still watching me.
“Get dressed,” I said.
“School’s canceled,” she reminded me. Outside, the temperature was twenty below and the roads had disappeared beneath blowing snow.
“I know.”
“Where are we going?”
I took my truck keys from the hook.
“To see the sheriff.”
I did not call Rebecca.
That mattered later.
At the county sheriff’s office, I explained everything to Investigator Helen Quinn, a gray-haired woman in her fifties who listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she said, “Planning a spouse’s funeral isn’t illegal.”
“I’m not dying.”
“She may believe you are.”
“She works at the clinic. She has my medical records.”
Quinn studied me.
“You’ve been having health problems?”
“Dizzy spells. Three since October.”
“Any common factor?”
I almost said no.
Then I remembered something.
Rebecca had made my night-shift coffee for nine years. After the first dizzy spell she had stood in our kitchen rubbing my back and told me I was drinking too much caffeine.
“I’m going to start making it weaker,” she had said.
Every spell had happened after I drank from that thermos.
I told Quinn.
For the first time, her expression changed.
She drove with me to the funeral home.
Lawrence Hale already had the folder waiting.
I recognized Rebecca’s handwriting immediately.
Daniel Robert Parker.
Date of birth.
Mother’s maiden name.
Brain cancer.
Three-to-four-month prognosis.
Anticipated death: late February.
Funeral: March seventh, eleven o’clock.
And beneath that, a hymn.
The same hymn Rebecca and I had chosen for our wedding.
Investigator Quinn read the form twice.
Then she pointed to the date.
“What happens the last weekend in February?”
“I go ice fishing.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Pinewater Lake.”
“What route do you drive?”
“There’s a marked ice road from the public landing to the fishing reef.”
“Who maintains it?”
I thought of the orange reflectors stretching over the frozen lake.
“Cal Mercer.”
Quinn looked up.
I knew Cal.
Everybody did.
He ran the bait shop at the landing.
And eighteen years earlier, before Rebecca met me, he had been her boyfriend.
That fact had never bothered me once in fifteen years of marriage.
Sitting in the funeral home, I suddenly wished it had.
Quinn closed the folder.
“I need you to do something extremely difficult.”
“What?”
“Go home.”
I stared at her.
“You’re going to act tired. You’re going to eat dinner. You’re going to sleep in your bed. You’re going to let your wife believe you know absolutely nothing.”
“And the coffee?”
She took a slow breath.
“You’re going to keep accepting it.”
I said nothing.
“You won’t drink it. Bring every thermos to me.”
I looked through the office window at snow blowing across Main Street.
Seventeen days until the date my wife had written down for my death.
Seventeen days to learn why.
That evening Rebecca made pork chops.
She talked about the clinic, helped Ben cut his meat, and reminded Lucy about her spelling test. Halfway through dinner, she reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“You should think about cutting back at work. I’d rather have you around than have the overtime.”
Her hand was warm.
Her wedding ring touched mine.
I looked at the woman I had slept beside for fifteen years and wondered whether she was worried I might die.
Or worried I might not.
