The Dead Woman Who Stole My Husband Was Coming For Me Next

The coffee had gone cold twenty minutes ago.

I hadn't noticed. I was still holding the mug, both hands wrapped around ceramic that no longer offered any warmth, staring at my phone screen like it might rearrange itself into something that made sense.

It didn't.

*Mon trésor, je t'attendrai.*

Ryker's comment sat there at the top of the memorial post, pinned by likes. Fifteen of them. Fifteen people had pressed a little heart on the most devastating thing I'd ever read, and not one of them knew what I knew.

Last Tuesday, sitting right here at this same kitchen island, I'd asked Ryker if he wanted to send flowers to Elodie Marchand's family. He'd shrugged, poured himself a glass of water, and said, *I wouldn't even know what to write. I barely know French beyond 'bonjour.'*

I set the mug down before I dropped it.

My fingers were already moving, opening the translation app. I already knew what it meant — some buried corner of my brain had caught the shape of the words the moment I'd read them — but I needed the screen to confirm it. I needed something outside my own head to tell me I wasn't misreading this.

*My treasure, I will wait for you.*

The kitchen felt very quiet. Outside, Seattle was doing its usual gray morning thing, low clouds pressing down against the window glass, a bus hissing past on the wet street below. Normal sounds. Normal world. Nothing had changed out there.

Everything had changed in here.

I went to Elodie's profile.

I told myself to be methodical. I told myself not to spiral. I scrolled slowly, the way you do when you're looking for something and terrified you'll find it.

December. A grid of Aspen photos — powder snow, blue sky, that particular golden light that only exists at high altitude. In the third one, Ryker stood behind a woman with dark curly hair and a red ski jacket, his arms looped around her waist, both of them laughing at something off-camera. The kind of photo where no one's performing for the lens. The kind where they've forgotten anyone else exists.

I remembered that day.

I remembered sitting on our couch with takeout going stale on the coffee table, waiting for him to call. He'd finally picked up around nine, his voice slightly thick, and said the guys he'd been skiing with had come down with something. *Food poisoning, probably. I've just been hanging out in the lodge by myself, babe. Kind of a wasted trip.* He'd sounded tired. Lonely, even. I'd felt bad for him.

I kept scrolling.

February. Elodie at the Space Needle, her smile wide, the city spread out silver behind her. The location tag said Seattle. I stared at the date until the numbers stopped looking like numbers.

That week. That exact week. Ryker had told me a client was in town, someone from the Tokyo office who needed hand-holding through a series of dinners and site visits. He'd come home on Friday smelling like rain and restaurant kitchens, kissed me on the cheek, and fallen asleep on the couch with his shoes still on. I'd pulled a blanket over him. I'd thought, *he works so hard.*

The coffee mug was still sitting there. I pushed it away.

She'd been here. She'd been in my city, and he'd been with her, and I had pulled a blanket over him when he came home.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the gray outside the window to shift into something slightly lighter. Long enough for the sounds of the apartment to start filtering back in — the hum of the refrigerator, a car alarm somewhere distant, and then, from down the hall, the familiar creak of the bedroom floorboards.

I moved fast.

Phone face-down on the counter. Shoulders back. I picked up my cold coffee like it was something I'd been meaning to drink.

"Morning, babe." My voice came out steady. I don't know how.

Ryker appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was shirtless, hair still flattened on one side, eyes carrying that bruised, swollen look he'd had every morning for the past week. He'd cried at the news, actually cried, sitting on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands while I rubbed his back and told him it was okay to grieve. *She was your friend,* I'd said. *Of course it hurts.*

I watched him cross the kitchen. Thirty-one years old, broad-shouldered, the small tattoo on his left forearm that I'd traced with my finger a hundred times. He was the person I knew better than anyone. He was a stranger.

He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. His face pressed into the curve of my neck, warm breath against my skin, and I felt my whole body go rigid before I forced it to relax.

"Thank you," he murmured. "For being so patient with me this week. You've just—" He exhaled. "You're my angel, Willow. You know that?"

*Mon trésor, je t'attendrai.*

The translation looped through my head on repeat. I made my hand reach up and cover his. I made my fingers squeeze.

"What do you want for breakfast?" I asked.

He lifted his head. Kissed the back of my neck once, soft and absent, the way you kiss someone when you've stopped really seeing them. "I'll just do coffee. You don't have to make anything."

He let go of me and moved to the machine, pulling a mug from the cabinet. His back was to me. His phone was on the counter.

I wasn't going to look at it. I had enough. I had more than enough already, and whatever came next I could figure out from a safe distance, somewhere that wasn't this kitchen, somewhere that wasn't standing three feet from him while my chest felt like it was slowly caving in.

Then the screen lit up.

A message preview. Just long enough to read before it dimmed.

*The French girl's things arrived. Come pick them up. — M*

I stopped breathing.

The French girl.

Elodie Marchand had been dead for eight days. She had died on a mountain in Colorado, in an accident that the news had described as a tragic fall, and Ryker had come home from that same mountain, claimed he'd heard about it from mutual friends, and cried in our bedroom.

And now someone was holding her things. For him. Because apparently he had a right to them.

The coffee machine finished with a soft beep. Ryker reached for his mug without turning around.

I looked at the back of his head. At the familiar slope of his shoulders. At the phone on the counter between us, screen dark again, quiet as a secret.

My hand moved toward it before I could think about whether I wanted to know.