I know you married me for a green card, Maya, and I know you think this marriage is just paper, my 76-year-old husband whispered from his deathbed inside Oakhaven Manor, his skin gray as ash.
The acrid smell of burnt paper lingered in the air, a constant reminder of Silas’s impulsive act. My phone, still dead from lack of signal, felt useless in my pocket. I watched Evelyn and Silas exchange triumphant glances, convinced they had erased their tracks.
They thought they had won this round. They didn’t know the full scope of my problem, or Arthur’s.
Later that afternoon, a soft vibration against my thigh startled me. It was my old flip phone, a relic I kept for emergencies, tucked deep in my bag. It showed one new message.
An unknown number.
The text was short: “Paralegal. Cobb. Your husband’s death certificate. Something’s wrong. Can you talk?”
My heart hammered against my ribs. A lifeline. I crept to the furthest corner of the servant’s quarters, pressing the phone to my ear.
“This is Maya Lin,” I whispered.
“Ms. Lin, this is Clara Cobb. I’m a paralegal at Bradley & Associates,” a hushed, urgent voice responded. “I’m not supposed to be doing this, but I saw the preliminary filings for the Pendelton estate. Your husband, Arthur…”
“What about him?” I urged, my grip tightening on the phone.
“His death certificate,” Clara said, her voice dropping even lower. “It lists his blood type as AB-negative.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of it. “And…?”
“And that’s impossible. We have his military discharge records from 1968 in his file. They clearly state O-positive.”
A chill snaked up my spine, colder than the damp air in the old manor. AB-negative and O-positive. Those aren’t just different; they’re fundamentally incompatible. There was no way to simply “mistake” those.
“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“Positive,” she affirmed. “I double-checked. My grandmother actually worked here, at Oakhaven Manor, back in the day. She always talked about old Mr. Pendelton. This discrepancy… it just doesn’t sit right.”
The mention of her grandmother working at Oakhaven Manor sent a shiver through me. A hidden connection, a deeper history I knew nothing about.
“What does it mean?” I asked, my mind racing. This wasn’t a clerical error. It was a lie.
“I don’t know,” Clara admitted, her voice strained. “But if the blood type on the death certificate is wrong, it means… well, it raises questions about the identity of the deceased.”
The identity of the deceased. The man I married. Arthur. Or rather, the man who had *claimed* to be Arthur Pendelton.
“What can we do?” I asked. My previous arguments about forged ink, destroyed by Silas, suddenly felt small in comparison to this.
“The coroner’s office performs routine tissue sampling for post-mortem analysis,” Clara explained, her voice tight with tension. “It’s standard procedure. They keep samples in a secure vault for a period of time.”
She took a shaky breath. “I could… I could risk it. I could get a sample. It would be a huge breach of protocol, I could lose my license, but if something truly isn’t right here…”
The weight of her offer settled on me. This wasn’t just risking her job; it was risking her entire future, her livelihood, for a stranger. But the potential payoff… proof that the man who died wasn’t who he claimed to be.
“Yes,” I said, my voice firm. “Please. If you can.”
“I’ll find a way,” Clara promised. “I’ll try tonight. The morgue is quiet after hours.”
The line went dead. I stared at the phone, then around the cold, silent room. The forged document was gone, but a new, more horrifying truth was beginning to emerge. The man who died in Arthur’s bed might not have been Arthur at all. This was a deeper betrayal than a green card scam. This was an identity stolen, a life usurped.
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