“Melissa…”
The whisper came from behind the mausoleum wall, low and strained, like someone trying not to breathe too loudly. I turned so fast my heels almost slipped on the damp grass.
Nothing.
Only shadows.
Then the metallic sound came again—closer this time. My pulse hammered in my ears as I slowly stepped backward toward my father’s grave, eyes scanning every direction at once.
“Who’s there?” My voice cracked, sharper than I intended.
Silence answered me.
And then my father’s phone on the gravestone lit up.
A new message appeared—typed in real time.
“Don’t look at the ground. Look at me.”
My breath stopped.
That wasn’t just a message. Someone was here. Watching. Typing.
I forced myself to lift my eyes.
A figure stood near the edge of the cemetery path, partially hidden beneath the trees. Too tall to be a groundskeeper. Too still to be a passerby. My mind screamed at me to run, but my body refused to move.
Then the figure stepped forward into the pale light.
It was my husband.
Andrew.
My stomach dropped. “You… what are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked at the phone on the gravestone, then at me, as if measuring how much I already knew.
“I didn’t go on a trip,” he finally said. “I never left this city.”
My hands tightened into fists. “You lied to me. You left after Dad’s funeral—”
“I left because of your father,” he interrupted quietly.
The wind shifted. Something about the way he said it made the world feel wrong.
Then he added the words that shattered everything I thought I knew:
“Because he wasn’t as dead as they told you.”