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

I slid Ryker’s phone into my pocket the second he turned on the espresso machine. The noise covered the slip of my hand, the tap of glass against denim, and my pulse—sharp, frantic—was the only sound I could hear inside my own head.

He didn’t notice. He never noticed, not when he thought I was doing something as benign as rinsing a mug or grabbing my robe. I caught a glimpse of his reflection in the microwave door: hunched shoulders, head bent, the lines at the corners of his eyes deeper than they’d been even a week ago. Guilt or grief, I couldn’t tell. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

I mumbled something about needing a shower and retreated down the hall, my feet silent on the old wood floor. The phone was slick in my palm, pre-warmed by his skin.

In the bathroom, I locked the door and started the water—too hot, so it sent a hiss of steam into the air, fogging the mirror in seconds. I turned on the fan for good measure. As if he could hear my heartbeat through the wall. As if he could hear the sudden, hungry way I was breathing, the way my hand shook as I unlocked his phone.

Four years of sharing everything. Passwords, PINs, passcodes. The illusion of transparency, so thorough I’d stopped even thinking about it. My fingers hesitated for a second, then typed in his birthday. The phone opened with a soft, traitorous click.

I went straight to his messages. I didn’t bother with the notifications—my mind was already constructing a thousand stories, each worse than the last. I scrolled to the bottom, found the thread from “M.” No photo. Just a blank gray circle and a number I didn’t recognize. Three messages, stacked on top of each other like tiny grenades waiting to go off.

First: "She left a box for you."

Second: "Pickup by Friday or I burn it."

Third—the one from this morning: "The French girl's things arrived. Come pick them up. — M"

My hands were already sweating. I scrolled up, but there was nothing before this week. No history, no evidence of who M was. I wanted to believe it was mercenary, clinical. That he’d only wanted to tie up loose ends for someone he barely knew. But the words didn’t fit that story. None of this fit that story anymore.

I closed the messages, breathing through my nose, trying to keep my hands steady. There was a part of me that wanted—needed—to stop. To drop the phone, step into the shower, scorch the questions out of my skin with water so hot it hurt. But I couldn’t. Not now. Not after everything I’d seen.

I opened his photos.

The first row was us. Birthday candles, blurry selfies, a shot of the Space Needle through rain-streaked glass. I scrolled down. Past Christmas, past the Fourth of July. My thumb moved faster, the images blurring. Until they didn’t. Until she appeared.

Elodie. Not the carefully curated Elodie from Instagram—sunlit, always just out of reach. These were different. Raw. Alive. In our kitchen, holding a spatula with one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, her hair twisted up in a messy knot. Laughing, head thrown back, standing in front of the fridge I’d bought with Ryker last spring.

In his car—my seat, the passenger seat—her face turned to the camera, lips pursed, eyes wide and silly. The faint outline of his tattoo visible in the reflection of the window.

The bed. Our bed. She was curled on her side, knees tucked up, Ryker’s gray hoodie swallowing her frame. She looked back at the camera with a half-smile, as if she’d just been caught in the act of something secret. I felt the room tilt. I remembered that hoodie. I’d searched for it last winter, convinced I’d left it at my sister’s. I’d missed it, missed the way it smelled like detergent and his skin.

I clicked on a video. Seventeen seconds. The thumbnail was Elodie’s face, close to the lens, eyes shining in the way people’s eyes do when they’re about to say something they shouldn’t. She spoke in French, words soft and low. Behind the camera, Ryker laughed—his real laugh, not the one he gave to clients or neighbors or even me, sometimes. The sound made my stomach twist.

I didn’t trust myself to listen, so I opened the translation app, holding the phone up to the speaker. The text bloomed on the screen like an accusation:

"Tell me, this time you’re serious. Tell me you’ll leave her for me."

My own breath turned jagged. The video ended with a thump, a giggle, and then the sound of Ryker’s voice: "I promise."

I closed the app. The steam from the shower had fogged the entire mirror, beads of condensation running down the glass in uneven trails. I watched my own reflection blur, then disappear.

A knock at the door. "Willow?" Ryker’s voice, muffled by wood and water. "The water stopped—are you okay?"

I swallowed, fighting to keep my voice from splintering. "Yeah, I— I can’t find my makeup remover. Give me a few minutes?"

He hesitated. I could hear the suspicion, the edge of something unfamiliar in his silence. I wiped the phone clean—messages closed, photos cleared from the screen, translation app erased from recent tabs. I checked the volume, the lock screen. Everything as it had been. Everything normal.

I tucked the phone into the pocket of my robe. I rinsed my face with cold water, hoping it would wash away the flush in my cheeks, the tremor in my hands. The bathroom smelled like eucalyptus and panic.

I opened the door.

Ryker was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed now, his phone clutched tight between both hands. He looked up at me, and for a second I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Not grief. Not even guilt.

Fear.

He stood, the phone nearly trembling in his grip. His voice was rough around the edges, like he’d been swallowing glass. "Willow, I need to go out for a few hours. There’s— a friend, something I need to handle. Could you— could you go to your sister’s for the day?"

I stared at him, at the way his shoulders hunched, the way his eyes darted from my face to the floor and back again. The box. Elodie’s box—somewhere out there, waiting for him. Or for me. Or for both of us.

I forced a smile. "Sure," I said. "Whatever you need."

Outside, the city was still gray, but inside, the air felt sharp, expectant. I wondered which of us would find the box first.