Chapter 1
After I died, the killer dumped my body by the roadside.
My husband, Edward Foster, drove past that spot every day, but he never noticed anything strange.
He just assumed I was mad at him and staying at a hotel.
It wasn't until his grandma called him that things started to click. "Edward, why hasn't Grace come yet?"
"She didn't come to you today?" Edward asked, surprised.
"No. She didn't come back last week either. Did you two have a fight or something?" his grandma pressed.
That was when it hit Edward. I hadn't been home in over two weeks.
When a cold, unfamiliar male voice answered my phone, he started to panic.
*****
I died.
After a fight with Edward outside, I headed home alone.
That was when a huge truck from the opposite lane slammed into me and sent me flying. Blood gushed everywhere.
But the driver didn't even bother to call the police.
Instead, he calmly put on a pair of gloves and took everything on me that looked valuable.
Then he dragged my body to the side of the road, dug a shallow pit, and buried me there.
That night, a heavy rain poured down and washed away every trace of blood on the road.
After what felt like ages, something white, thin like silk, slowly drifted up from my body.
My chest felt strangely light, as if something inside me was gone.
I looked down and saw an empty hole where my heart used to be.
I snapped my gaze to the corpse half-buried in the dirt. Its chest was hollow too, blood seeping into the ground.
Someone had ripped my heart straight out.
Was it that truck driver?
People said that when something terrible happened to someone they loved, they felt it, no matter how far away they were.
But Edward felt nothing at all, not even a hint that I was gone.
My soul drifted into a hospital.
Edward was there, sitting beside Claire Lowell's bed.
Claire lay pale against the pillows, her voice trembling. "Edward, I'm really scared. The heart transplant is happening soon."
"Don't be scared. Finding a matching heart is a blessing," Edward reassured her.
Then he asked, "How did they suddenly find a donor for you?"
"I... I have no idea," Claire replied nervously. "They said the donor had a terminal illness and agreed at the last minute. I'd already finished all the pre-op tests, and I happened to be a match."
Edward nodded.
Soon, Claire was wheeled into the operating room.
Right after, several medical staff hurried in, carrying a medical cooler.
To my shock, inside the cooler was a heart. It was still beating.
Could that heart be...
The doors to the operating room closed with a heavy thud.
Panic hit me all at once.
It felt like I'd stumbled into a massive conspiracy.
My heart had just been stolen, and suddenly Claire had a heart for her transplant. Was that really my heart?
Edward stood alone outside the operating room, waiting.
I rushed inside.
I wanted to scream, "Wait! Someone, check where that heart came from!"
But nobody could hear me.
The doctors were totally absorbed in their work, not noticing anything else.
The surgeon carefully placed the strong, healthy heart into Claire's chest and began stitching her up.
That night, I rushed through every hospital in the city, desperately searching for my missing heart.
There were three heart transplants happening that same night.
Other than Claire and a kid, the son of a local tycoon was also getting a new heart in a different hospital.
They even had an entire floor sealed off.
I didn't know which one was my heart, or whether it was even among them.
Late that night, Claire was finally wheeled out of the operating room.
Edward arranged for a private nurse to look after her before driving home.
As his car passed the stretch of road where I was buried, my whole soul tensed.
Would he notice me lying right there beneath the dirt?
The car moved closer and closer.
I was shaking with nerves.
Edward glanced out the window.
His gaze fell exactly on the spot where I was buried.
A bird was sitting right on top of the mound of dirt.
Just as I thought he was going to pull over, he looked away and hit the gas.
All my tension vanished.
He got home.
As his car rolled through the gate, he frowned. "Grace, you really know how to push things, don't you? Even turned off the lights. Guess you really don't want me back."
Just then, his secretary called.
Edward turned the car around and headed back to the office.
So that was what he thought. He really believed I was angry over Claire and had shut off every light in the whole place just to make a point.
On his way back to the office, he passed the road where I was buried once more.
Birds scattered into the air as his car sped by.
And still, he had no idea I was there.