
For five years, I lived as a widow and worked as a florist, selling plasma between shifts to pay the debts my husband left after his fatal crash. Every overdue notice still carried his name. I paid anyway. Then, while I was arranging centerpieces in a billionaire’s mansion, my dead husband walked through the door. He carried a child on one arm and kissed his former secretary. He saw me, called for his guards, and had me dragged into his private study. Arthur had come back from the dead. Now he needed me to keep quiet.

A thousand white lilies crowded the grand hall of the Sterling mansion. Their sweetness caught in my throat as I set the last stem in a crystal vase. Cold water and florist wire had split my hands. Five years ago, I designed rooms like this. Now I decorated them for strangers. A child squealed behind me. The sound bounced off the marble, followed by a man's deeper laugh. The lily stem bent between my fingers. I had buried that laugh six feet down. It belonged to a life that ended when Arthur's plane went into the Atlantic in flames. I turned, still holding the bent stem. A little boy, no older than four, sprinted across the hall, his arms outstretched. "Daddy!" He jumped into the arms of the man at the front door. I had mourned that man for 1,825 days. I still worked three jobs and s
