Chapter 3 - THE FUNERAL HE HELD BEFORE THE INSURANCE COMPANY WOULD CALL ME DEAD
The public search lasted nine days.
I hated every hour of it.
Not because I wanted Michael warned.
Because news stations showed my wedding photograph beside the word MISSING.
Volunteers searched trails.
Park rangers interviewed tourists.
People who worked at Summit sent messages to a phone police had secured as evidence.
My employees were grieving someone who was alive forty miles away.
Detective Park explained the line repeatedly.
“We are not declaring you dead.”
“I know.”
“We are not fabricating evidence.”
“I know.”
“We are allowing a suspect’s existing belief to continue while search and financial warrants are executed.”
“I know.”
None of that made it feel good.
Michael arranged what he called a funeral on day ten.
Legally it was a memorial service.
No body.
No death certificate.
No insurance payout.
But he ordered a closed ceremonial casket.
White roses.
My photograph enlarged beside the altar at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
He told reporters the family needed “a place to say goodbye.”
I watched the public livestream from a secure hospital room.
My son, Eli, slept beside me.
William stood near the window.
“Turn it off.”
“No.”
“You don’t need this.”
“I want to see.”
Michael walked to the front of the church wearing the black suit I bought him for Summit’s tenth-anniversary gala.
He looked exhausted.
Convincingly.
Ashley sat three rows behind him.
Not beside him.
Smart.
She wore black.
Her head stayed lowered whenever cameras moved.
My mother had been dead four years.
Michael’s parents lived in Arizona and flew in.
They cried.
That hurt.
They had no idea what their son had done.
Then Michael spoke.
“Emma was fearless.”
I almost laughed.
“She built a company because she believed medicine should reach people before bureaucracy did.”
That part was true.
“She loved our child before she ever saw his face.”
My hand moved over Eli’s blanket.
Michael paused.
“For reasons none of us understand, she walked into that storm.”
I stopped breathing.
There it was.
The story.
Not slipped.
Not lost.
Walked into it.
He continued:
“I wish I had stopped her.”
William cursed softly.
I looked at him.
“He’s making me responsible.”
“Yes.”
Michael lowered his head.
“I will spend the rest of my life wondering what I missed.”
I turned off the livestream.
Enough.
An hour later, Detective Park arrived with my attorney Rebecca Sloan and a representative from the insurer’s special-investigations unit.
Rebecca hugged me carefully.
Then looked at Eli.
“Oh, Emma.”
I cried again.
Everyone kept making me cry.
I hated them for it.
Then Rebecca put a binder on the tray table.
“Michael filed the insurance claim yesterday.”
“Without a death certificate?”
“He can notify them of a loss. They cannot pay yet.”
“Did he tell them I walked into a storm?”
“Yes.”
“Does that matter?”
The insurer’s investigator answered.
“Potentially. The policy is within the contestability period.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-four months. It was issued fourteen months ago.”
“What does that mean?”
“We review representations, beneficiary changes, circumstances of loss, and possible fraud more closely.”
He looked toward Rebecca.
“We have already frozen any administrative processing pending law-enforcement coordination.”
Good.
Michael’s fifty million was not waiting in a checking account.
It was trapped behind forms.
Then Rebecca opened the Carter Continuity Plan.
“This worries me more.”
“Why?”
“Because Michael filed an emergency petition with the Summit board this morning.”
“For what?”
“Interim executive authority.”
My stomach tightened.
Michael was Summit’s chief financial officer.
Not CEO.
I remained chief executive and controlling shareholder.
“What authority?”
“He claims your presumed death creates a leadership emergency.”
“I’m not legally dead.”
“He knows.”
“Then?”
“He wants the board to appoint him acting CEO while the search continues.”
I laughed.
“Will they?”
“No.”
Rebecca’s face hardened.
“Because I told the chair there are material irregularities under investigation.”
“Did you tell them I’m alive?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Detective Park requested limited disclosure until warrants were executed. The board knows there is credible evidence requiring Michael’s immediate administrative suspension.”
My chest tightened.
“Suspension?”
“Effective today.”
First consequence.
Small.
Real.
Then Rebecca slid another document toward me.
Founder Succession Certificate.
Executed three months earlier.
It stated that upon my death, Michael would receive temporary voting authority over my fifty-eight-percent founder block until probate resolved ownership.
“My estate plan doesn’t say that.”
“I know.”
“Signature?”
“Yours.”
“I didn’t sign.”
“Notarized by Ashley Monroe.”
I looked at her.
“Ashley isn’t a notary.”
“She became one four months ago.”
Of course.
Rebecca continued.
“There’s another clause.”
I read.
If Founder dies without surviving issue, surviving spouse shall receive first option to purchase founder shares at formula value.
“What if I have a surviving child?”
“The shares go into the Child Continuity Trust.”
Independent trustee.
No Michael control.
I looked at Eli.
That was why.
Michael did not simply need me dead.
If Eli survived me, my shares left Michael’s reach.
Rebecca’s voice softened.
“Emma.”
I read the clause again.
“What if a child is conceived but not born yet?”
“In Colorado, a posthumous child who is conceived before death and later born alive can have inheritance rights depending on the governing documents and law. Your trust specifically protects descendants born after your death if conceived during your lifetime.”
Michael knew that.
He had sat in the estate-planning meetings.
He had asked questions.
I remembered one.
“What if Emma dies during childbirth?”
Rebecca said it was covered.
At the time, I thought he was being thorough.
Now my stomach turned.
My phone—an evidence-room replacement—buzzed.
Detective Park looked at hers.
“The warrants were executed.”
“Where?”
“Your home. Summit executive offices. Ashley’s condo.”
“And?”
Park’s expression changed.
“They recovered a second phone from Michael’s home office.”
My pulse quickened.
“What’s on it?”
“Too early.”
Then she looked at Rebecca.
“But we found something in his locked desk.”
A printed map of Rocky Mountain National Park.
The overlook where Michael pushed me was circled in red.
May you like
Beside it, in Michael’s handwriting:
No guardrail after winter closure.
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