He Came Back Alive ,But I Buried Everything We Had

Wanda sat in the lounge next door sipping warm milk. Every now and then, her voice drifted through the wall as she chatted with a friend on the phone.

"I was so scared. Some delivery-gig psycho nearly hurt my baby..."

"Are you sure you know the person who filed the report?"

The officer looked up at me.

"He's my boyfriend. Four years ago, he pushed me out of the way during a mudslide and got swept away. Everyone thought he was dead. Including me."

Oswald's lawyer strode over and cut me off.

"Officer, my client Mr. Delgado has never participated in any volunteer teaching program, nor has he ever had any relationship with this woman. Her claims lack any factual basis and constitute fabrication of evidence and stalking."

"I have proof."

I pulled the old phone from my pocket.

One corner of the screen was shattered. Water damage. The touchscreen barely responded.

It took me a long time to scroll through, but I found the photo album.

The first picture was of me and Oswald at the teaching site.

He'd been wearing a white T-shirt, tanned dark from the sun, grinning so wide you could see every tooth.

I had my arms around his, my cheek pressed to his shoulder.

Behind us stood the gate of that little village school.

The photos after that included letters he'd written me, then chat logs, then transfer records.

And beyond those, screenshots of over a dozen credit card statements from the medical bills and nursing fees I'd covered for Serena.

Every date, every amount, every timeline laid out plain as day.

I turned the phone around to show the officer. My voice was raw.

"Is this enough?"

The officer took the phone and went through it carefully.

Wanda had appeared in the doorway at some point. The color was draining from her face.

She saw the photos of us together.

She saw the chat logs where Oswald called me Dee and promised to marry me after graduation.

She saw the six-figure debt I'd shouldered alone, cleaning up after a dead man's life.

"Oswald?"

Her voice was thin. Barely there.

"What is this?"

Not a single crack appeared on Oswald's face.

"Photoshopped."

He didn't even glance at the screen.

"AI can do anything these days. Five hundred bucks gets you a whole family portrait."

He turned to Wanda, took her hand, and lowered his voice.

"Don't listen to her nonsense, babe. You're pregnant. Don't let yourself get upset."

Wanda pressed a hand to her stomach and stepped back. Her face was white.

Oswald turned back to me. Something finally surfaced in his eyes.

It was anger.

He walked over, crouched in front of me until we were eye level.

Then he kicked my knee.

The chair flipped backward. I went with it, tumbling off the step. My forehead cracked against the edge of a concrete planter, and something warm and wet ran down past my brow.

"Filing a false report. Fabricating evidence. Harassing a pregnant woman."

He stood over me, looking down.

"How much did you think you could squeeze out of me?"

The officer rushed over and pulled him back. Oswald let himself be moved, straightened his cuffs, put his arm around Wanda, and walked out.

Blood seeped into my eyes. The world blurred red.

Every sound was pulling further away.

The last image that floated up was from four years ago.

A rain-drenched hillside. Oswald using every ounce of strength to shove me clear of the mud. His mouth moving, telling me to run, don't look back.

His face covered in mud and blood. But he was smiling at me.

The clinic ceiling had a large water stain.

Four stitches in my forehead. The gauze had already soaked through, the blood darkening to a deep rust.

Twenty-three missed calls on my phone.

All from the same number.

The children's hospital ICU.