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 3

I dragged my father’s old fishing shack onto the safe reef before dark and lit the propane heater.

I did not fish.

Outside, the lake groaned and cracked beneath the cold. I had slept through those sounds every February since Dad died. That night each one felt like a warning.

At ten, Investigator Quinn came over the radio.

“Cal left his house. Went to Murphy’s Tavern.”

That made sense.

If I died at five in the morning, Cal needed witnesses proving he had been drinking all evening.

“Rebecca?” I asked.

“Home.”

Quinn hesitated.

“Daniel, there’s something else.”

“What?”

“She hasn’t called you.”

I knew immediately what she meant.

Every year, sometime around seven, Rebecca sent the same message.

Be safe. Love you.

Fifteen years of marriage had made it almost automatic.

This year my phone was silent.

Quinn said softly, “She already knows where she expects you to end up.”

Snow began near midnight.

By one, the shoreline disappeared.

At four fifty in the morning, sitting inside the dark shack, I heard an engine.

Low.

Slow.

Deputy Cole whispered over the radio.

“One vehicle entering the lake. Lights off.”

My hands tightened around my father’s coffee cup.

Cal.

He drove his own road from memory.

He passed marker ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

At thirty-one he stopped.

For several minutes nothing happened.

I imagined him looking down the false road.

He expected to see tire tracks leading east.

Maybe broken ice.

Maybe black water.

But my truck had never driven onto the lake.

Eventually Cal stepped outside.

He pulled the first false reflector from the ice.

Carried it west.

Dropped it into the original hole.

Then he went back for another.

He was moving the road back.

Exactly as Quinn predicted.

He had replaced three markers when the darkness exploded with light.

Two sheriff’s vehicles came around the reef with high beams and emergency lights blazing. Deputy Cole approached from the north on a snowmobile.

Cal stood between two roads, holding an orange reflector.

One road led toward safe ice.

The other ended in black water.

There was nowhere to run.

Investigator Quinn walked toward him.

“Cal Mercer, put the marker down.”

He did.

“You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit first-degree intentional homicide.”

I watched from the doorway of my fishing shack.

I did not move closer.

Twelve minutes earlier, while Cal sat in his truck wondering why my vehicle was not beneath the ice, his phone had received a message.

?

Twenty-eight minutes later, after deputies had handcuffed him, another arrived.

Is it done?

Both messages came from Rebecca.

Quinn drove to my house personally.

She brought a female deputy and used no lights.

My children were still sleeping.

Rebecca answered the door wearing one of my old hydro-station sweatshirts.

When Quinn told her I was alive, Rebecca did not smile.

When she told her Cal had been arrested, Rebecca sat down on the stairs.

According to Quinn, my wife’s first words were, “But Daniel’s sick.”

That had become her story.

Maybe she had repeated it so many times she had started believing some part of it.

Her mother came for the children that morning.

When investigators asked about the clonidine, she covered her mouth.

“I thought I was losing pills,” she whispered. “Rebecca told me it was my age.”

Cal talked before lunch.

Men like Cal imagine loyalty until they are sitting in an interrogation room realizing their partner has a lawyer in the next room.

He admitted everything.

Rebecca supplied the medication.

He had impersonated me for the insurance examination.

The false road had been his idea.

Rebecca had chosen the weekend.

She knew I always went alone.

She knew the weather forecast.

She knew which hymn she wanted at my funeral.

According to Cal, when he once hesitated, Rebecca said, “Everyone already thinks he’s dying. By spring, they’ll believe the lake just got there first.”

On March seventh, at eleven in the morning, I drove Lucy and Ben to Northland Funeral Services.

Lawrence Hale had never canceled the chapel reservation.

I asked him not to.

The room was empty except for three chairs near the front and a pot of coffee in the back. Julie, the employee whose accidental phone call had saved my life, stood quietly near the door.

I sat between my children.

They knew by then that their mother was in jail.

They did not understand why.

I told them as much truth as children could carry.

“Your mom made some dangerous choices,” I said. “She’s going to be away for a long time.”

Lucy stared at the carpet.

“Did she want you dead?”

There are questions a father wishes he could answer with a lie.

“Yes.”

Ben began crying.

I pulled him against me.

“It had nothing to do with either of you. Nothing. Your mother loves you in whatever way she knows how. But sometimes a person can love one part of life and still do something terribly wrong in another.”

Lucy looked toward the coffin display room.

“Was this supposed to be your funeral?”

“Yes.”

She took my hand.

“But you’re here.”

“I am.”

For several minutes, nobody spoke.

Then I told them about their grandfather’s rule.

“The throat never freezes honest.”

Ben sniffed.

“What does that mean?”

“It means something can look safe and still be dangerous underneath.”

Lucy understood more than I wanted her to.

When we stood to leave, Lawrence Hale asked what he should do with my funeral file.

“Close it?”

I looked at the folder on his desk.

“No.”

He seemed surprised.

“Leave my name on it.”

“And the date?”

“Blank.”

I smiled faintly.

“I’ll fill that in myself when the time comes.”