The Coroner He Gaslit

I signed the death certificate. Then I opened the file. Dr. Meera Rao has been the county coroner for eleven years, and married to Ronan Hale for the same eleven. She's used to cadavers with stories. She isn't used to one with a bracelet she bought her husband. The Jane Doe on her table is Ronan's missing paralegal. The apartment lease has his signature. So does the phone record. So does the safe-deposit ledger that the paralegal's mother turned over last week. Meera does not scream. She does not leave. She signs the certificate, goes to work the next morning, and quietly pulls every case her office ever signed off on her husband's word. There are forty-two. A betrayal romance about a wife who tells the truth for a living — and finally tells it about her own marriage.