I thought burying my husband would be the hardest thing I would ever survive.
I was wrong.
The hardest part was discovering that the man I had buried wasn't my husband at all.
Three years after his funeral, I had finally rebuilt my life. I had a new home, a new job, and a quiet little routine that didn't involve waking up in the middle of the night expecting to hear his footsteps.
Then, one rainy Thursday evening, someone slipped an envelope beneath my front door.
No stamp.
No address.
Just my name written across the front in handwriting I hadn't seen in years.
MARLOWE.
My hands started shaking before I even opened it.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed my late husband, Caspian Vale, standing outside a hotel.
Alive.
Older.
And holding the hand of a woman I recognized immediately.
My husband's former secretary.
The woman who had attended his funeral wearing black.
The woman who had cried harder than I did.
But the photograph wasn't what made my stomach turn.
On the back, someone had written:
You buried the wrong man.
I barely had time to process the words before my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Silence.
Then a man's breathing.
Slow.
Steady.
Familiar.
My heart stopped.
“Who is this?”
The caller finally spoke.
“Did you really believe I was dead?”
I dropped the phone.
Because I knew that voice.
I had spent three years trying to forget it.
And now the man I had watched being lowered into the ground was calling me from the darkness.
But there was one problem.
Caspian had been dead for three years.
At least, that's what I had been told.
And when I rushed to the cemetery the next morning, I discovered something that made the blood drain from my face.
His grave had been opened.
And the coffin was empty.
