I laid Julian to rest only a day before I said goodbye to our daughter. Eight months into my pregnancy, I stood shivering in the rain while his sealed coffin was lowered into the soil.
They refused to let me look at him one last time. They argued the accident was too gruesome, insisting I cherish him as he once was—as though a memory could ever fill the void of a casket.
By the following dawn, the life growing inside me had also ceased its struggle. Within twenty-four hours, our entire future vanished, swallowed by layers of earth and stillness.
Three years passed, and I found myself existing in a third-floor flat in a new city. My surroundings were bare, my existence was hushed, and I took a job at a dentist’s clinic simply to stay occupied.
I endured by never glancing at the past until a loud commotion began one Sunday afternoon. A new family was moving into the unit directly across from mine.
Peering through the glass, I spotted a man handling a sofa with effortless skill. As his eyes drifted up toward my window, an icy shiver ran through my veins.
He possessed Julian’s profile, his sharp gaze, and the curve of his lips. The likeness was so uncanny it couldn’t be a fluke; it felt like a painful, walking shadow.
I slipped into the corridor before doubt could take hold. The man reached the landing with a toddler perched on his hip. She had rosy cheeks and clutched a pink stuffed toy.
“Pardon me,” I managed, my voice barely a whisper.
“Yes?” He looked my way casually, but the moment our eyes locked, his face hardened into a mask of absolute horror.
From this distance, the likeness vanished—it was undeniably him. My pulse thrashed against my chest so violently I feared I might collapse right there on the carpet.
“This may seem eccentric,” I said softly, “but are you related to anyone named Julian? Perhaps a brother or a cousin?”
His frame turned to stone. He shifted the child’s weight and looked away, his grip tightening until his knuckles were bone-white.
“No,” he muttered sharply. “Elena, let’s head inside now, sweetheart.”
That name struck me like a fist. Elena. It was my own name. I watched him struggle with his door lock, and that’s when I noticed his right hand.
Two digits were absent. The same fingers Julian had lost as a boy. My stomach churned, and for a moment, the entire floor seemed to shift beneath me.
“Your hand…” I breathed. “Julian, is it truly you?”
A female voice echoed from the stairwell. A woman named Sienna appeared, glancing between the two of us with mounting doubt.
“Is everything alright, dear?” she inquired. “Elena, it’s time for your mid-day snack.”
Julian ignored her. He stared at me as if I were an apparition that had arrived to drag him back to the past.
“This lady is just mistaken, honey,” he stammered. “Come on, let’s show the little one her new room.”
That word—”mistaken”—broke something within me. Three years of sorrow, crushing debt, and isolation surged to the surface all at once.
“I am not mistaken,” I declared, my voice ringing out. “Julian, I am the woman you married. And you are clearly standing here alive.”
Inside my kitchen, the web of lies disintegrated. Julian had been buried under a mountain of hidden loans and gambling debts I hadn’t suspected.
He and Aunt Beatrice had staged the entire crash. She faked the paperwork and ensured the coffin stayed shut to hide him from the creditors.
“I believed you’d be better off if I were gone,” he mumbled, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Better off?” I spat. “I lost the roof over my head. I had to bury our baby by myself while you built a new world and gave your child my name!”
Sienna lingered by the entrance, her face draining of color as she understood her reality was built on the ruins of mine. She wasn’t the enemy—just another casualty.
I didn’t waste time weeping the following morning. I visited the registrar’s office, the mortuary, and finally the authorities. I wanted every deception on record.
I faced Beatrice at her house. She attempted to bribe me for my silence, but I stared her down with an icy resolve I never knew I had.
“You helped him destroy my life,” I told her coldly. “Now, I’m going to ensure the justice system takes care of what’s left of yours.”
Within the week, Julian and Beatrice were indicted for fraud and faking a death. Sienna gave the key testimony that ensured their conviction.
I observed from my window as the officers escorted him away. I felt no triumph, nor did I feel delight. I simply felt the weight of the truth finally surfacing.
As the corridor fell silent once more, I realized the burden I had carried for three long years had vanished. I was, at last, truly free.