Chapter 1 - THE CHAPEL AT ST. JUDE’S
The air inside the chapel at St. Jude’s Funeral Home smelled suffocatingly of stale lily petals, burning candle wax, and absolute despair.
Outside, rain lashed against the stained-glass windows, blurring the gray Chicago skyline into weeping streaks of watercolor. Inside, nearly eighty mourners sat in hushed, black-clad rows, listening to the monotonous murmur of the priest reading final rites for thirty-four-year-old Nathan Cross.
According to the official police report and the signed death certificate from Saint Leopold Memorial Hospital, Nathan had suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on Tuesday night following a high-speed vehicle collision on Route 9. His body had been pronounced cold on arrival. For forty-eight hours, his widow, Clara, had been trapped in a nightmare of endless paperwork, condolence flowers, and hollow sympathies.
Everyone in the chapel believed her father was dead.
His four-year-old daughter, Ellie, was the only one who refused to let go.
Ellie sat in the front pew between her grieving mother and her uncle, Julian. While Clara wiped away silent, bitter tears behind a dark lace veil, Ellie stared intently at the polished mahogany casket resting on the altar pedestal. She wasn't crying anymore; her small face was set in a quiet, unyielding defiance that no one in her family seemed to understand.
"He's just sleeping, Mommy," Ellie whispered for the hundredth time that morning, clutching her small stuffed rabbit tightly against her chest.
"Ellie, sweetheart... please," Clara whispered back, her voice breaking as she stroked her daughter’s dark curls. "We talked about this. Daddy’s in heaven now."
"No, he's not," Ellie insisted, her voice surprisingly firm for a four-year-old. "He's right there. And he's cold."
When the priest finished his prayer and invited the immediate family to step forward for the final casket viewing, Ellie didn't wait.
She slipped out from beneath her mother’s arm. Her tiny light-pink shoes tapped softly against the carpeted aisle as she walked straight toward the elevated casket.
May you like
Ellie was too small to see over the edge of the casket.
So she climbed.
