During my husband’s funeral, my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number: “I’m alive. Beware of the children.” At first, I assumed it was some cruel prank.

Standing beside the mound of freshly turned soil—forty-two years of my life about to be buried beneath it – my phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number sliced through my grief like a blade.

I’m alive. I’m not the one in the coffin.

My already-broken world dissolved completely. My hands shook so violently I could barely type a …