A Call From Seven Years Later

On our wedding day I waited to become his bride, and my groom died.

For a whole month after that, I cried myself through every single day.

In a daze, I accidentally dialed his secret messenger account.

He'd hardly ever used that account, but I'd gotten into the habit of talking my longing into it.

The line rang for two seconds, and the video call connected.

The face on the screen wasn't Simon Weiss. It was a little boy, seven or eight years old.

“Are you looking for my daddy?”

His bright little face beamed. He held up a fancy greeting card, showing it off to me in a crisp, eager voice.

“My daddy wrote it. ‘Happy 2033, sweetheart. Happy seventh anniversary’! My daddy went to get the anniversary present!”

I froze where I stood.

The year?

It hit me all at once. The other end of this call was seven years in the future.

I pushed down the bitterness and the shock churning under my ribs.

It had to be coincidence. The old number recycled by the carrier, picked up by some stranger's kid.

I dragged out an ugly smile and offered a soft little blessing. ：“I hope your mommy and daddy are happy forever, okay?”

But the next second the boy swung the phone around, thrilled, the image lurching everywhere.

The camera swept across the wall behind him.

Dead center hung an enormous wedding portrait.

The moment it came into focus, the cold sank all the way through me.

The woman in the wedding dress was my best friend.

And the man's face was exactly, identically my dead husband's. Simon's.

……

I stared at the screen, my breath coming fast and shallow.

But the proof was right there in front of me. Even the small tear-shaped mole at the corner of his eye was the same.

Simon wasn't dead.

Seven years on, he wasn't just alive. He'd married Rachel Butler.

So why had they lied to me?

There was a roaring in my head, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

I opened my chat thread with Rachel.

It still sat where we'd left it last month.

I'd told her I was getting married, and she'd sent back a long voice message.

There was a bitterness in her voice. ：“Lia, I hope you'll be happy. I just got overseas. I'm helping my first love deal with something, so I won't be able to make it to your wedding.”

I'd ached for her at the time.

I knew Rachel had a first love she'd never gotten over.

She used to drink herself sick over him, late at night.

I'd tried to talk her into it. ：“You love him that much. Go win him back.”

She'd laughed at herself then. ：“I'm the one who dumped him back then, being headstrong, and I got so much else wrong. He's about to get married. How could he ever forgive me?”

Looking back now.

The way she'd looked at me then wasn't regret at all.

“He came to say goodbye. He told me he was getting married. I couldn't help it, I threw my arms around him. I told him I'd changed my mind, that this time I didn't want to give up. You walked ninety-nine steps toward me. Let me walk the last one.”

So her first love, the one getting married, was Simon?

My hands and feet went cold. I turned and dug through the cardboard box of his things I'd just finished sorting.

Inside an old leather case, I found a photo of them from high school.

One I had never seen before.

In it, Simon and Rachel stood side by side.

Rachel had her arm hooked through his, and the two of them smiled sweetly at the camera.

So they had once been a couple.

When Simon and I first got together.

Rachel was always running him down in front of me.

Saying he had a bad temper. Saying he didn't know how to be considerate.

I'd thought she was just afraid I'd get hurt.

It turned out they were exes who couldn't stand each other, love curdled into hate, still tangled up in each other.

So what did that make me?

One move in their game? A tool to make the other one jealous?

And then I remembered.

Six months ago, Simon had gone abroad on a business trip.