Terms of Renewal

The manila envelope arrived on Tuesday, three days after the funeral. Margaret held it against the kitchen window, squinting at the familiar letterhead through morning light that cut the paper thin as communion wafer.

EternalCare Insurance Solutions.

She'd forgotten about David's policy - seventeen years of monthly payments, automatic deduction, the kind of insurance you sign and never think about until the unthinkable thinks about you. The coffee maker gurgled behind her, a sound like drowning in reverse.

"Congratulations," the letter began, "your claim has been approved."

Her hands shook. The envelope crackled.

Margaret had buried David four days ago in plot 247-C, next to the Hendersons' granite angel. She'd chosen the mahogany casket, upgraded the liner, paid the fees. The finality of signatures. The weight of dirt on wood.

But here: Section 12-B. Resurrection coverage. Active as of policy inception.

"Processing time: 72-96 hours post-mortem."

The phone rang. She answered without thinking.

"Mrs. Patterson? This is Carol from EternalCare customer service. I'm calling regarding claim number EC-2847-X. Your husband's resurrection is scheduled for this afternoon."

Margaret's coffee cup met the counter harder than intended. Brown liquid spread toward the letter.

"I - what?"

"Standard procedure, ma'am. The mobile unit will arrive between two and four. Please have identification ready and ensure the original burial site is accessible."

"But he's - " The words caught somewhere between her throat and the impossibility. "He's been dead for four days."

"Yes ma'am, that's within our service window. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

The line went dead.

Margaret stared at the coffee stain bleeding through David's resurrection paperwork. She thought of his final breath in the hospital - that long exhale that seemed to empty not just his lungs but the entire room. The way his hand went slack in hers, wedding ring sliding loose on his finger.

Now they wanted to bring him back.

She drove to the cemetery at quarter past one, the letter folded in her purse next to David's reading glasses. The maintenance crew had already exhumed plot 247-C. The casket sat beside the open grave like a question mark punctuated with dirt.

The EternalCare van pulled up at 2:17 PM. Two technicians in navy uniforms wheeled out equipment that hummed with frequencies she felt in her teeth.

"Standard resurrection, ma'am," the younger one said, consulting his tablet. "Policy covers full restoration, memories intact through point of departure."

Margaret watched them attach cables to David's body, monitoring screens that translated death into data. His face had the waxy composure of funeral homes, but beneath the makeup, she could see him - the man who'd left toast crumbs in the butter, who'd hummed Sinatra while shaving, who'd died holding her hand and whispering her name.

The machines sang their electric hymns.

David's chest rose.

His eyes opened - the same brown eyes that had watched her walk down the aisle twenty-three years ago, that had seen their daughter take her first steps, that had closed four days ago and should have stayed closed.

"Margaret?" His voice scraped like hinges on an unused door.

She knelt beside him, one hand on the dirt-stained casket, the other reaching toward his face before stopping in the space between them. He was David. He wasn't David. He was David returned, which somehow made him neither David nor returned but something else entirely - a word written in disappearing ink, visible only from certain angles.

"How do you feel?" she whispered.

David sat up slowly, dirt cascading from his funeral suit. He looked at his hands, flexed his fingers, touched his face as if confirming his own existence.

"Like I've been somewhere very quiet," he said. "And now it's loud again."

The technicians packed their equipment with the efficiency of men who resurrect the dead for a living. They handed Margaret discharge papers and a twenty-four hour customer service number, then drove away in their humming van, leaving her alone with her husband who had been dead and was now not dead but was not quite alive in the way alive used to mean.

David stood beside his own grave, brushing soil from his lapels.

"I remember dying," he said. "I remember your hand. I remember letting go."

Margaret nodded. The Henderson angel watched them with marble eyes that had seen this before, would see it again.

"What happens now?" she asked.

David looked at the open grave, then at the cemetery stretching away in neat rows of resurrection possibilities. "I don't know," he said. "The policy didn't come with instructions for after."

They walked back to the car together - Margaret and the man who had been her husband, who had died holding her hand, who now walked beside her carrying the weight of having been elsewhere, having been gone, having been brought back by premium payments and customer service representatives who processed the impossible with the same efficiency they'd use for auto claims.