Chapter 1

My body was cold.

It was a strange thing to know. I couldn't feel the chill of the cheap apartment floor, but I saw the pale, waxy look of my own skin. I saw my hair, once shiny, now dull and spread out on the worn linoleum. My eyes were open, staring at a ceiling I had come to hate.

I died on Christmas Eve. A day meant for warmth and family. I died alone, drained of life, in a small apartment my billionaire husband, Ethan Miller, let me rent. He called it a kindness.

Three days had passed. My soul, or whatever this was, floated near that ceiling, a helpless spectator to the world I had left.

Down below, my son, Leo, finally realized something was wrong.

For three days, he thought I was sleeping. He was only six. He' d curl up beside my body, his small hand tucked in mine, whispering stories to me.

"Mommy, wake up soon. It's snowing," he'd said yesterday.

Today, his patience ran out.

"Mommy?" he whispered, his small voice trembling. He pushed my shoulder gently. "Mommy, wake up."

My body didn't move. It couldn't.

Tears welled in his big, brown eyes, so much like Ethan's. He tried again, pushing harder. "Please, Mommy."

The silence in the room was a heavy blanket. I wanted to scream, to tell him I was here, to hold him. But my form was like smoke. My arms passed right through him when I tried.

He scrambled off the floor, his small legs unsteady. He remembered the phone. The emergency phone I had insisted we keep. He dragged a stool to the counter and carefully climbed up, his small fingers dialing the only number he knew by heart.

His father's.

The phone rang for a long time. I prayed Ethan would answer. I prayed he would hear the fear in our son's voice.

"What?" Ethan's voice was sharp, impatient. It cut through the quiet room.

"Daddy?" Leo's voice was a tiny squeak. "It's Leo."

There was a pause. I heard the faint sound of music and laughter in the background. A party.

"Leo? Why are you calling me? Where's your mother?" Ethan sounded annoyed, not concerned.

"Mommy is sleeping," Leo said, his lip quivering. "She won't wake up. I tried, Daddy. I tried really hard."

"Sleeping?" Ethan let out a short, harsh laugh. "She's always sleeping. Or complaining. Tell her to stop being so dramatic."

My non-existent heart ached. He didn't believe him. He didn't care.

"No, Daddy, it's different," Leo insisted, his voice rising with panic. "She's cold."

"Cold? Of course she's cold. Did she forget to pay the heating bill with the money I give her? Is that what this is about? Money?"

"No," Leo sobbed. "Please, Daddy. Come and help me wake her up."

"Listen to me, Leo," Ethan's voice turned hard as ice. "I am tired of these games. You tell that delusional mother of yours that if she wants to talk to me, she can call me herself and apologize. Don't call me again."

"But Daddy-"

The line went dead. Ethan had hung up.

Leo stared at the phone, his small face a mask of confusion and despair. The hope in his eyes flickered and died. He slowly put the phone down and slid off the stool.

He walked back to my body and lay down beside me. He didn't have a blanket, just the thin coat he wore day and night. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and tried to share its warmth with me, pressing his little body against my cold one.

"It's okay, Mommy," he whispered, his voice thick with tears he was trying to hold back. "Daddy is just busy. You're not delusional. You're the best mommy."

He was hungry. I knew he was. For three days, he had survived on a half-eaten bag of crackers he found in the cupboard. He went to the kitchen, his small feet shuffling on the cold floor. He reached into the bag and pulled out the very last cracker. It was broken in two.

He came back and sat beside me. He carefully placed one of the broken pieces on my lips.

"For you, Mommy," he said. He ate his own small piece, chewing slowly, as if to make it last.

My soul wept. I was a ghost drenched in sorrow, watching my living child starve beside my corpse.

Then, a memory flashed in my mind. A happier time. A time before Sarah Jenkins, Ethan' s childhood sweetheart, had reappeared in our lives.

It was a Sunday morning in our sun-drenched mansion. I was pretending to be asleep. Leo, then four, was giggling, and Ethan was holding a long, beautiful peacock feather. It was his special pen, a gift from a business partner, but he rarely used it for writing.

"Let's wake the sleeping queen," Ethan had whispered to Leo, his eyes full of love for me.

He gently tickled my nose with the soft tip of the feather. I scrunched my face, trying not to laugh. Leo had squealed with delight.

"It's not working, Daddy!"

"We need more power," Ethan had declared dramatically, tickling my neck. I finally broke, laughing and pulling both of them into a hug. We were a family then. Happy.

The memory was so clear, so painful.

Leo, lying on the floor, suddenly sat up. His eyes, though filled with sadness, now held a spark of an idea. A desperate, childish idea.

The feather.

He remembered it, too. He believed it was magic. He believed it could wake me up.

"The pen," he whispered to himself. "Daddy's magic pen."

He looked at my still face, a new determination hardening his soft features.

"I'll get it, Mommy," he promised. "I'll go to Daddy's house and get the pen. Then you'll wake up. I promise."