Chapter 1

Wade Hollis was already dragging his niece back from the casket when the first hymn ended.

The last note hung over the folding chairs and died.

Eight-year-old Ella dug her sneakers into the old pine floor and pulled the other way.

"Don't," she said. "He's still warm."

The sanctuary went quiet.

A man in the third row stopped with his hat in his hands.

Wade's hand tightened on her arm.

"Bethany, come get your daughter," he said.

Bethany rose from the folding chair in her one black dress.

Her brother did not let go.

"She doesn't know what she's saying," Wade told the room.

"She knows what she felt," Ruby Caudill said from the back pew.

Nobody turned around.

Wade had the suit, the truck, the power of attorney, and the town's ear.

Bethany had an apron and a shift at the diner in an hour.

"Just gas," Wade said. "It's grief. I want the lid closed."

Bethany kept her eyes on the casket.

"Then ask him," she said, "why his boots are dry."

Two men in the front row looked down at his feet.

Clean.

Not a crust of slush on them.

The snow outside was two inches of gray melt.

"Keep your daughter quiet, or I'll have you both removed," Wade said.

He reached over the casket with his free hand.

Ella's red coat snagged on the pine as she twisted free of him.

Her grandpa's brass mine tag hung on a cord around her neck.

Number 1147.

Emmett Hollis wore it forty years underground.

One more thing sat in plain sight.

A pale bare band on his ring finger, where his wedding ring used to be.

Nobody in that church asked about it.

Then Ella put her small hand on her grandfather's wrist.

The wrist was warm.

She had been trying to tell them for an hour.

"Grandpa," she whispered. "I'm right here."

Then the dead man's fingers closed around her hand.

Ella screamed.

Wade stumbled back so hard his dry boots caught the chair leg.

"It's gas," he said. "Bodies do that. It's gas."

Ruby was already moving up the aisle.

She pressed two fingers under Emmett's jaw.

Her own hand began to shake.

Her old nurse's watch read 11:14.

"Say that again," she said.

"What?" Wade said.

"Gas," Ruby said, "doesn't have a pulse."

The whole church heard it.

Then a whisper came up out of the casket, weak and cracking, and it carried.

"Wade. Where's my coat?"