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

The drive home took eleven minutes. I know because I counted every one of them, watching the clock on Harper's dashboard while she followed two car lengths behind me, close enough that I could see her headlights in my rearview mirror the whole way. She hadn't asked if I wanted her to come. She'd just grabbed her keys.

I was grateful for that. I didn't trust myself to ask for anything right now.

The red and blue light hit me before I even turned off the engine. It strobed through the front windows of our building in slow, rhythmic sweeps, painting the brick wall of the lobby in colors that felt wrong against the gray morning. A patrol car was parked at the curb, not blocking traffic, just sitting there. Patient. Like it had all the time in the world.

I pushed open the front door.

Two detectives. Our sofa. Ryker in the armchair with his face buried in both hands, shoulders shaking in a way I'd only ever seen once before, at his father's funeral six years ago.

The woman stood first. She was maybe forty, dark hair pulled back, the kind of face that gave nothing away. Her partner stayed seated, a notepad balanced on his knee, pen already moving.

"Harper Sinclair?" she said. "I'm Detective Reyes. We have a few questions about Elodie Marchand."

The blood left my body from the feet up.

I heard myself speak from somewhere very far away. "I'm Willow. He's—" I stopped. Swallowed. "I'm his fiancée. Willow Cross."

Reyes's eyebrow moved. Just barely. Just enough.

She wrote something down.

---

I sat in the chair nearest the window, the one I always curled up in to read on Sunday mornings. It felt wrong to be sitting in it now, straight-backed, hands folded in my lap like a person at a job interview. Ryker hadn't looked up since I came in. His breathing was ragged and wet, the kind that comes after crying has gone on too long.

Reyes stood near the fireplace. Her partner, who hadn't introduced himself, stayed on the sofa and kept writing.

"Ms. Cross," Reyes said, "we've reclassified Elodie Marchand's death as a suspicious death as of this morning. The medical examiner found bruising on her neck inconsistent with a fall. The pattern suggests manual pressure applied prior to the time of death."

The room was very quiet except for Ryker's breathing.

"Additionally," Reyes continued, "the last call Ms. Marchand made before she disappeared on the Cascade trail was to your fiancé's number. The call lasted forty-seven minutes."

I looked at Ryker. He still hadn't lifted his head.

"In his initial statement," Reyes said, "Mr. Sinclair described his relationship with Ms. Marchand as a casual friendship." She paused. "He's since amended that statement. He's told us there was an—" she glanced down at the notepad in her partner's hands "—emotional intimacy between them."

She looked at me then. Directly, the way people look when they want to watch the exact moment something lands.

"Were you aware of that relationship, Ms. Cross?"

Across the room, Ryker finally raised his head. His eyes found mine immediately, red-rimmed, desperate, the look of a man reaching for the last thing he has left. A plea. A question. *Please,* those eyes said. *Please.*

I had three seconds.

Three seconds to decide what kind of woman I was going to be in this room. The betrayed fiancée who'd been kept in the dark — shocked, wounded, but loyal. Or something else. Something that would put me on the wrong side of a detective who already knew more than she was showing.

I let my face do the work I'd practiced on the drive over. I let my chin drop slightly, let my eyes fill, let the breath catch in my throat the way it does when something hits you somewhere soft and unprotected.

"I found out this morning," I said. My voice came out quieter than I intended, which was actually better. "He— he hadn't told me. I didn't know what they were to each other until today."

Reyes didn't react. She just wrote.

"The forty-seven minute call," she said. "You weren't aware of that?"

"No."

From the armchair, Ryker made a sound. Low, involuntary, like something breaking in a place too deep to reach. I didn't look at him.

Reyes's partner finally spoke. His voice was younger than I expected. "Ms. Cross, do you know if Mr. Sinclair ever visited Ms. Marchand in person? Outside of group settings?"

I thought of the photos. The kitchen. My seat in his car. The gray hoodie I'd spent a whole winter looking for.

"I don't know," I said.

It wasn't a lie. Not technically.

---

They asked Ryker a few more questions. He answered in short, broken sentences, the kind you give when you've already said too much and you're trying to stop the bleeding. I sat with my hands folded and my face arranged and watched him come apart in increments, and I felt—

I didn't know what I felt. Something that wasn't grief and wasn't anger and wasn't quite pity either. Something colder. Something that had been sitting in my chest since I'd watched Elodie's face on that seventeen-second video, looking straight into the camera like she'd known someone else would be watching eventually.

The detectives stood to leave twenty minutes later. Ryker hadn't moved from the armchair. His hands hung between his knees, empty.

I walked Reyes to the door. Her partner was already in the hall, already on his phone. She turned back once, and her voice dropped to something that didn't carry.

"Ms. Cross." Not *Willow.* Not *Harper.* She'd already corrected herself. She was precise, this woman. "If you happen to remember anything — about belongings Ms. Marchand may have left for your fiancé — you can reach me directly."

She held out a card. Small, white, a number printed in plain black type.

I took it.

"Of course," I said.

She held my gaze for one beat longer than necessary. Then she was gone, her footsteps even and unhurried down the hall.

I closed the door.

I stood with my back against it, the card between two fingers, and stared at the room — the sofa with its flattened cushions where the detectives had sat, the streak of gray light coming in through the window, Ryker still folded into the armchair like something that had been wrung out and left to dry.

She knew about the box.

Reyes already knew about the box, and she'd told me — not him — and she'd looked at me the way you look at someone when you're deciding whether they're an asset or a liability.

I pressed the card flat against my palm and felt the edges of it, sharp and clean.

I needed to find that box tonight. Before Ryker did. Before Reyes did. Before whoever M was decided Friday had already come and gone.