It had to be some kind of mistake, a cruel joke from someone who’d gotten hold of Richard’s phone. But the number was different, and who would do something so sick? I grabbed my car keys with trembling fingers. I had to see for myself. I had to know what kind of nightmare I’d stumbled into because one thing was certain: I’d just buried my son this morning, and dead men don’t send text messages.
I drove to Richard’s house in a daze, my mind refusing to accept what seemed impossible. The familiar tree-lined street looked the same as always, but everything felt different now, wrong somehow. I’d been here just two days ago, helping Olivia pack some of Richard’s things before her supposed trip to Phoenix. She’d been crying then, or at least I thought she had been.
Richard’s house sat dark against the October sky. A single light glowed from the kitchen window in the back. My hand shook as I used my spare key to open the front door.
«Richard?» My voice cracked as I called out.
Silence answered me. I walked through the living room, past the couch where I’d comforted Olivia four days ago when the hospital called. I passed the family photos on the mantle: Richard’s college graduation, their wedding day, Christmas mornings. Everything looked exactly the same, yet nothing made sense anymore.
The kitchen light drew me forward. As I rounded the corner, I froze. My son sat at his own kitchen table, very much alive, a cup of coffee growing cold in front of him. He looked up when I entered, his face pale and drawn, with dark circles under his eyes that I’d never noticed before.
He’d lost weight, a lot of weight. His clothes hung loose on his frame. «Dad,» his voice was barely above a whisper. «I’m sorry.»
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. My brain struggled to process what my eyes were seeing. This was my son, alive and breathing, sitting in his kitchen three hours after I’d watched his coffin being lowered into the ground.
«You’re supposed to be dead,» the words came out strangled, barely human.
Richard’s face crumpled. «I know, I know how this looks, how insane this must be for you. Please, sit down. Let me explain.»
I remained standing, my legs locked in place. «I buried you today, Richard. I threw dirt on your coffin. I gave your eulogy. What kind of sick game is this?»
«It’s not a game,» he stood up slowly, his movements careful, deliberate. «Dad, I’m in serious trouble. The kind of trouble that could destroy not just me, but you too. Everything we’ve worked for, everything our family has built.»
«What are you talking about?»
Richard ran his hands through his hair, a gesture I’d seen him make thousands of times since childhood when he was nervous or scared. «Six months ago, I made a mistake at work, a huge mistake. I was handling the Meridian Industries account. You remember? The pharmaceutical company? They were our biggest client, worth $2.5 million annually.»
I nodded numbly. He’d talked about that account constantly, about how it was going to set his firm up for years.
«I discovered they were falsifying their clinical trial data, hiding serious side effects from a new arthritis medication. People were getting sick, Dad, really sick. Some were dying,» his voice broke. «I should have reported it immediately. But Meridian’s CEO, James Crawford, offered me $500,000 to keep quiet. ‘Just look the other way,’ he said. ‘Let the FDA approval process continue.'»
My stomach dropped. «Please tell me you didn’t take it.»
Richard’s silence was answer enough. «Jesus, Richard, what were you thinking?»
«I was thinking about Olivia’s spending, about the mortgage on this house, about the debt we’d racked up trying to keep up appearances. She wanted the renovations, the new car, the vacation to Europe. $500,000 would have solved everything,» he looked up at me, tears in his eyes. «But I couldn’t do it, Dad. I couldn’t let people die for money.»
«So what happened?»
«I went to the FBI, turned over all the evidence, and became a whistleblower. Crawford was arrested last month, and the medication was pulled from the market. But before they got him, he made sure I’d pay for betraying him.»
Richard walked to the kitchen window, staring out into the darkness. «Crawford has connections, Dad. Bad connections. The kind of people who don’t forgive and don’t forget. Three weeks ago, I started getting threats. Phone calls telling me that I’d destroyed too many careers and cost too many people too much money. They wanted me to disappear permanently.»
I sank into a chair, my legs finally giving out. «So you faked your death.»
«Dr. Peterson helped me. He’s an old friend from college who works at the hospital now. We staged the heart attack and falsified the death certificate. Peterson said I had maybe hours before Crawford’s people found me. This was the only way.»
The pieces were starting to come together, but one huge question remained. «What about Olivia? She was devastated when I called her. She cried on the phone.»
Richard’s expression hardened. «Olivia knew everything, Dad. About the Meridian account. About the money I turned down. About the threats. She knew I was planning to fake my death.»
He paused, his voice dropping to barely audible. «She was supposed to play the grieving widow for six months, then quietly move away and meet me in Canada. We’d start over together.»
«But she’s in Cancun. With Miguel.»
Richard’s laugh was bitter and broken. «Yeah, I saw the Instagram post too. She was supposed to wait, Dad. We had a plan. But apparently, she had a better one.»
I thought about the photo, about Olivia’s radiant smile, about the comments from her friends. «She was never planning to meet you in Canada, was she?»
«No. I figured that out when I saw my life insurance policy had been cashed in. $750,000 paid out to my loving widow just yesterday,» Richard turned back to face me. «She played her part perfectly, didn’t she? The shocked wife. The grieving widow. Too distraught to even attend the funeral. She probably figured being mysteriously absent would make her seem even more tragic.»
The full scope of the betrayal hit me like a physical blow. «She let me bury an empty coffin. She let me grieve for you while she was planning her vacation with her lover.»
«I’m sorry, Dad. I never meant for you to get hurt like this. I thought if I could just disappear and start over somewhere else, maybe everyone would be safer. But I couldn’t let her get away with this. She not only betrayed me, she betrayed you too. Made you suffer while she counted her money.»
I looked at my son—thinner, haunted, but alive—and felt something shift inside me. The grief I’d carried for four days began transforming into something else entirely, something harder and colder.
«What do we do now?» I asked.
Richard met my eyes, and for the first time since I’d walked into his kitchen, I saw a spark of the determination that had made him successful in business. «Now we make sure she doesn’t get to enjoy that money, and we make sure she pays for what she put you through.»
«How?»
A slow smile spread across Richard’s face, and I realized my son had inherited more of my calculating nature than I’d ever known. «Well, Dad, legally speaking, I’m still dead. Which means Olivia is about to discover that being married to a dead man has some very serious complications.»
Richard moved to the kitchen counter and pulled out a laptop I’d never seen before. His movements were careful, methodical, like a man who’d been planning something for a long time. «There’s more you need to know, Dad. Things I discovered after I was supposed to be dead.»
He opened the laptop and turned the screen toward me. «Olivia wasn’t just planning to abandon me in Canada. She was planning to destroy me long before that.»
The screen showed email exchanges, bank records, and text message screenshots. My eyes struggled to focus on the details, but Richard walked me through each piece of evidence with the precision of the business consultant he’d been trained to be.
«Three months ago, I started noticing money missing from our joint accounts. Small amounts at first: $200 here, $300 there. When I confronted Olivia about it, she said she was buying surprise gifts for our anniversary,» he clicked to another screen. «She was buying gifts, all right. Just not for me.»
