…HER OBSESSIVE STALKER.”
My hands trembled so violently the brittle newspaper clipping threatened to tear. I read the article underneath the blaring headline. It detailed a woman—me, listed under a name I didn’t recognize—who had vanished, leaving behind a staged crime scene to escape a wealthy, powerful man who had systematically isolated her from her friends and family.
I dropped the clipping and snatched up the photographs again. The man in the pictures wasn’t the husband I had woken up to in the hospital. This man had kind, crinkling eyes and calloused hands. In every picture, we were laughing. We looked radiant. We looked free.
I dug deeper into the chest. Beneath the photos, resting against the trunk’s faded floral fabric lining, was a police sketch of the stalker, wanted for questioning in connection with my “disappearance” before the car crash.
The charcoal lines were unmistakable. The sharp jawline, the perfectly styled hair, the cold, calculating eyes.
It was my husband. The man who had been sitting by my hospital bed holding my hand when I opened my eyes ten years ago. He hadn’t rescued me. He had hunted me down, caused the “accident,” and used my traumatic brain injury as a blank slate to rewrite my reality.
He didn’t just steal my memory; he stole the life I had nearly died trying to build.
The wooden stairs leading up to the attic groaned under a sudden, heavy weight.
“Darling?” His voice drifted up from the hallway below. It was the same smooth, cultured voice that had whispered comforting lies to me for a decade. “What are you doing up there? The dust will aggregate your allergies.”
Panic, sharp and metallic, tasted like blood in the back of my throat. I frantically gathered the photos and the newspaper clipping, shoving them back into the chest. I slammed the heavy lid shut and scrambled to lock the padlock just as his shadow fell across the attic floorboards.
I spun around, my back pressed against the trunk.
He stood at the top of the stairs, perfectly dressed, his hands casually tucked into his pockets. His eyes flicked from my pale face to the old chest behind me, and a slow, terrifying smile spread across his lips.
“I thought I threw that old thing out,” he said softly, taking a step toward me. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
