He Found Me at the Funeral. An After Midnight Novel, #10

He arrived at her mother's funeral with a glass of cold water and a quiet voice. He didn't say she was in a better place. He didn't touch her arm. He just stood there, present and patient, while Clover Nash tried to survive the worst day of her life. Clover is a thirty-four-year-old true crime podcast editor in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Helen, died of a sudden pulmonary embolism - alone, on the kitchen floor, while Clover was across town not returning her calls.
The guilt is unbearable. The grief is worse. And the man who appears at the funeral reception - Asa Crane, quiet, angular, devastatingly attentive - feels like the only person in the world who understands what she's going through. Within weeks, Asa has replicated her mother's chamomile tea recipe. He quotes phrases from Helen's private art blog. He moves into the house where Clover found the body.
He replaces the smoke detector batteries. He cooks Helen's recipes in Helen's apron. He says "I'm here" like it's a vow. And Clover - shattered, desperate, drowning in a silence that has a physical weight - believes him. Then the cracks begin. His name isn't in the funeral guest book. The mutual friend who supposedly sent him doesn't exist. Her cousin warns her. Her best friend Jude, a bartender with razor-sharp instincts, tells her that no one is this perfectly calibrated without practice.
Clover starts digging - and discovers a folder on Asa's laptop labeled with a woman's name. Inside: nine obituaries spanning two years. All sudden deaths. All women. All survived by a daughter. Asa Crane has been attending strangers' funerals for over a decade, targeting grieving daughters, building relationships engineered from surveillance and research, and disappearing when his targets begin to heal.
One previous target filed a restraining order. Another fled the state. A third - a young woman in Charlottesville - fell down her basement stairs and never got up. The police ruled it accidental. Her family doesn't believe it. As Clover traces the pattern back to its origin, she uncovers a truth more devastating than betrayal: the night Asa's own mother died of a pulmonary embolism, he was home. Upstairs.
Headphones on. He heard a sound from the kitchen. He didn't go downstairs. She died alone - the same way Helen died. And every woman Asa has found since, every funeral he has attended, every glass of water and cup of tea and whispered "I'm here" - all of it has been a single, compulsive act of reenactment. He isn't saving them. He's trying to go back. And he can't stop. He Found Me at the Funeral is a searing psychological thriller about the violence that hides inside tenderness, the predators who arrive disguised as miracles, and the terrifying distance between being rescued and being consumed.
For readers of Verity, The Silent Patient, and Behind Closed Doors.