The rain drummed against the windows of our Victorian home as I adjusted the candles on the dining room table. Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years of marriage deserved the finest china, the good silver, and the bottle of Bordeaux we’d been saving since our honeymoon in France. The roast was in the oven, filling the house with the rich aroma of rosemary and garlic—Sarah’s favorite.
I glanced at my watch: 7:30 PM. She’d been napping for over two hours now, claiming one of her migraines had struck just as she was getting ready. “Just give me an hour, Michael,” she’d said, her hand pressed to her temple. “The medication will kick in, and I’ll be good as new for dinner.”
But that was at 5:15.
I’d checked on her twice since then, each time finding her curled on her side, blonde hair fanned across the pillow, breathing so softly I had to strain to hear it. The second time, I’d almost woken her, but decided against it. Sarah worked so hard at the marketing firm—sixty-hour weeks weren’t uncommon—and she deserved her rest.
The knock at the front door was sharp, authoritative. Three measured raps that cut through the gentle patter of rain like a blade through silk. I frowned, wiping my hands on the kitchen towel as I made my way through the foyer. Through the frosted glass panels, I could make out the silhouette of a uniformed figure.
I opened the door to find a police officer standing on my front porch, rain beading on his dark jacket. He was young—maybe thirty—with serious brown eyes and the kind of mustache that suggested he was trying to look older than his years.
“Michael Henley?” he asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
“Yes, that’s me.” My stomach tightened with the immediate worry that comes when law enforcement appears at your door uninvited. “Is everything alright, Officer…?”
“Patterson. Officer Patterson.” He shifted uncomfortably, water dripping from the brim of his cap. “Sir, I’m afraid I have some difficult news. Your wife, Sarah Henley—she was involved in a serious car accident about an hour ago.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. My hand gripped the doorframe, knuckles white. “No,” I said, the word escaping as barely more than a whisper. Then louder, with a nervous laugh that sounded foreign to my own ears: “No, that’s impossible. She’s upstairs, asleep. She had a headache.”
Officer Patterson’s expression softened into the kind of professional sympathy I imagined he’d practiced in mirrors. “Sir, I understand this is difficult news, but I need you to listen carefully. The accident occurred on Highway 78, near the Millfield exit. The vehicle was registered to this address, and the victim was identified by the registration and personal effects found at the scene.”
“Victim?” The word felt like glass in my mouth. “No, you don’t understand. There’s been a mistake. She’s here. Sarah’s here, in our bedroom.” The panic was rising now, real and raw, making my voice crack. “She came home from work with a migraine. She’s been sleeping since five o’clock.”
Patterson studied my face carefully, his trained eyes taking in every detail of my reaction. “Sir, the medical examiner has already confirmed the identity. I know this is shocking, but—”
“No!” I cut him off, the word exploding from me with desperate force. “She’s here! I’ll show you. I’ll prove it to you right now.”
Without waiting for his response, I turned and hurried toward the staircase, my feet moving of their own accord. Behind me, I heard Patterson’s heavier footsteps, more measured, more reluctant. The old wooden stairs creaked under our combined weight as we climbed to the second floor.
The hallway stretched before us, lit by the warm glow of the sconces Sarah had insisted on installing last spring. “She said they made the house feel more like a home,” I found myself saying, though I wasn’t sure why. “Sarah has this thing about lighting. She says harsh overhead lights make people look like corpses.”
Patterson didn’t respond.
Our bedroom door was slightly ajar, just as I’d left it after my last check. I pushed it open gently, not wanting to startle her awake too abruptly. The room was dim, illuminated only by the soft light from the hallway and the occasional flash of lightning through the sheer curtains.
There she was, exactly as I’d left her. A feminine form beneath our wedding quilt, blonde hair spread across the pillow like spun gold. The sight filled me with such relief that I almost sobbed.
“See?” My voice was hoarse with vindication and something that might have been triumph. “She’s right here. Sleeping. I told you there was a mistake.”
But Patterson wasn’t looking at me. His attention was fixed entirely on the figure in our bed, and something in his posture had changed. Gone was the sympathetic bearer of bad news; in his place stood a cop, alert and wary.
He took a step closer to the bed, his movements deliberate and careful. I watched as his eyes traced the outline beneath the covers, and I saw the exact moment when his training kicked in. His right hand moved slowly, instinctively, to rest on the grip of his service weapon.
“What is it?” I asked, genuine confusion coloring my voice. “What’s wrong?”
Patterson’s voice had changed too. Where before it had been gentle, understanding, now it carried an edge of tension that made the hair on my arms stand up.
“Sir,” he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the bed, “I need you to stay calm.”
“What are you talking about? She’s sleeping. The medication—”
“Please step back.” His words were measured, controlled. Professional. “That’s not who you think it is.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. “What do you mean? Of course it’s Sarah. That’s my wife.”
Patterson reached for his radio with his left hand while his right remained on his weapon. “This is Unit 47. I need backup at 1247 Elmwood Drive. And get me a detective. Now.”
“You’re scaring me,” I said, and I realized it was true. The certainty that had carried me up those stairs was crumbling, replaced by something cold and formless. “What do you see that I don’t?”
“Sir, I need you to move to the hallway. Now.”
But I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot, staring at the figure in our bed. Sarah’s hair, Sarah’s nightgown, Sarah’s side of the bed. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it had been when I’d checked on her an hour ago.
Wasn’t it?
Patterson was speaking into his radio now, his voice low and urgent, but I wasn’t listening to the words. Instead, I found myself studying the woman in our bed with new eyes. The hair was right—that particular shade of honey blonde that Sarah had been touching up religiously for the past five years. The nightgown was right too—blue silk with lace trim, the one I’d bought her last Christmas.
But there was something else. Something that nagged at the edge of my consciousness like a word on the tip of my tongue.
The stillness.
Even in the deepest sleep, Sarah moved. She was a restless sleeper, always had been. She’d shift positions throughout the night, murmur occasionally, sometimes reach out for me. I used to joke that she was an active dreamer, that she lived whole lives in her sleep.
But the figure in our bed hadn’t moved once since I’d brought Patterson upstairs. Not once.
“How long has she been like this?” Patterson asked, his radio now clipped back to his belt but his hand still resting on his gun.
“Since about five-fifteen,” I said automatically. “She came home from work early with a headache. Took some medication and said she needed to lie down.”
“And you haven’t tried to wake her? For your anniversary dinner?”
I started to answer, then stopped. The question felt loaded somehow, weighted with meaning I couldn’t quite grasp. “I… I didn’t want to disturb her. She works so hard, and the migraines are terrible when they hit.”
“Mr. Henley,” Patterson said carefully, “when was the last time you actually spoke to your wife? Had a conversation with her?”
The question should have been simple. Should have had an immediate answer. But as I thought about it, really thought about it, the timeline began to blur.
“This morning,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, they felt wrong. “Before she left for work.”
“What did you talk about?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. The morning felt like a lifetime ago, shrouded in the kind of fog that settles over routine interactions. Had we talked? We must have. We always did.
Didn’t we?
“I…” I began, then trailed off. The silence stretched between us, broken only by the sound of approaching sirens in the distance.
Patterson’s backup was arriving.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you one more time to step into the hallway.”
This time I complied, my legs feeling weak beneath me. From the doorway, I watched as Patterson approached the bed with the careful movements of someone defusing a bomb. He reached out slowly, his fingers barely touching the edge of the quilt.
Then he pulled it back.
The scream that filled the room came from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere I didn’t know existed. It was the sound of a world collapsing, of reality folding in on itself.
Because it wasn’t Sarah.
It wasn’t anyone.
It was a mannequin.
A store mannequin dressed in Sarah’s nightgown, fitted with a blonde wig that I now recognized as the one she’d worn to the company Halloween party two years ago when she’d gone as Marilyn Monroe. The kind of mannequin they use in department store windows, with painted features and glassy, unseeing eyes.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was that I had been caring for it. Talking to it. Believing it was my wife.
The worst part was that somewhere in the depths of my fractured mind, I had known.
“Mr. Henley,” Patterson’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “I need you to sit down.”
But I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the thing in our bed, the thing that had somehow, impossibly, become Sarah in my mind.
More police were arriving now. I could hear their voices downstairs, their heavy footsteps on our hardwood floors. Soon our home—Sarah’s home—would be full of strangers, all of them trying to understand what had happened here.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure I understood it myself.
“The accident,” I whispered. “You said there was an accident.”
Patterson nodded grimly. “Highway 78, about an hour ago. Your wife’s car hit a tree doing about sixty miles an hour. She was killed instantly.”
“But she was here. She came home. She had a headache.”
“Sir,” Patterson said gently, “when did your wife actually come home today?”
The question hung in the air like smoke. I reached for the answer, grasped for it, but it slipped away like water through my fingers.
“I…” I started, then stopped. The house suddenly felt enormous around me, full of shadows and secrets I couldn’t quite remember.
“Mr. Henley, I think you need to sit down. We’re going to get you some help.”
Help. The word echoed strangely in my head. Help for what? Help for whom?
A detective had arrived—a woman in her forties with kind eyes and graying hair. She was talking to Patterson in low tones, occasionally glancing in my direction with the sort of expression reserved for broken things.
“Michael,” she said, approaching me slowly, “I’m Detective Morrison. Can you tell me about today? Starting from when you woke up this morning?”
I tried to think, tried to assemble the pieces of the day into some coherent order. But it was like trying to hold onto dreams after waking—the harder I grasped, the faster they slipped away.
“I made coffee,” I said finally. “Two cups. Like always.”
“And Sarah? Was she there for coffee?”
The question should have been simple. Instead, it felt like a test I was failing.
“She…” I began, then stopped. “She must have been. I made two cups.”
But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. Had I seen her drink the coffee? Had we talked over breakfast?
The detective was watching me carefully, her expression growing more concerned by the minute.
“Michael, I want you to think carefully. When did you last have a real conversation with Sarah? Not this morning—really think. When did you last see her, talk to her, touch her?”
The question hit me like a physical blow. I stumbled backward, my back hitting the wall.
Because I couldn’t remember.
Not today, not yesterday. The days blurred together in a haze of routine and assumption. Coffee for two, dinner for two, conversations with someone who…
Who what?
Who wasn’t there?
“Oh God,” I whispered, the words barely audible. “Oh God, what did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Detective Morrison said quickly. “Sometimes, when we lose someone suddenly, traumatically, our minds protect us in ways we don’t understand.”
But I was remembering now, fragments coming back like pieces of a shattered mirror. The past three weeks, ever since Sarah had started working late more and more often. Ever since she’d begun coming home exhausted, too tired to talk, going straight to bed.
Except she hadn’t been coming home at all.
Had she?
“The mannequin,” I said, my voice hollow. “Where did it come from?”
Detective Morrison exchanged a glance with Patterson. “We’re going to figure that out. But right now, I need you to focus on taking care of yourself.”
Taking care of myself. The phrase was almost laughable. For three weeks, I’d been taking care of a department store dummy, convinced it was my wife. I’d been cooking for it, talking to it, setting the table for two while eating dinner alone.
The realization hit me with the force of a freight train: I’d been living with a ghost.
Not a supernatural ghost—something far more terrifying. A ghost made of grief and denial, clothed in familiar things and propped up by a mind that couldn’t accept the truth.
“The accident,” I said suddenly. “When did it happen? Really?”
Detective Morrison consulted her notes. “Three weeks ago, Michael. Sarah was killed in a car accident three weeks ago. You identified the body. You arranged the funeral.”
The funeral.
Oh God, the funeral.
It came back to me in flashes—the chapel filled with flowers, Sarah’s coworkers from the marketing firm, her sister flying in from Denver. The closed casket because the accident had been so severe. Standing at the graveside while they lowered her into the ground, thinking that it couldn’t be real, that any moment she’d walk up behind me and ask what everyone was doing there.
And then… nothing.
A blank space where three weeks should have been.
“I don’t remember,” I whispered. “I don’t remember anything after the funeral.”
“That’s not uncommon,” Detective Morrison said gently. “Trauma can affect memory in profound ways. Your mind was protecting you from a reality too painful to bear.”
But it wasn’t protection, I realized. It was torture. For three weeks, I’d been living in a carefully constructed delusion, complete with props and routines and conversations with the dead. I’d been the star of my own private horror show, and I hadn’t even known I was performing.
Downstairs, I could hear the crime scene technicians arriving, their equipment cases bumping against our walls. Our home—the home Sarah and I had shared for eight years—was about to become evidence in the case of my own insanity.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Now we get you help,” Detective Morrison said. “Real help. Professional help.”
I nodded, though the motion felt disconnected from any conscious decision. Help. Maybe that was what I needed. Maybe that was what Sarah would have wanted for me.
As they led me downstairs, past the anniversary dinner that would never be eaten, past the candles that had burned down to stubs, I caught a glimpse of our wedding photo on the mantelpiece. Sarah in her white dress, radiant with joy, her arms around a man who looked like me but seemed like a stranger now.
The man in that photo had a wife. Had a future. Had a grip on reality.
I wasn’t sure what I had anymore.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the world still felt gray and washed out. As I sat in the back of Detective Morrison’s car, I looked up at our bedroom window and tried to reconcile the past three weeks with the truth I now knew.
Sarah was dead.
She had been dead for three weeks.
And I had been living with a lie so complete, so elaborate, that it had become its own kind of truth.
The car pulled away from the curb, taking me toward whatever came next. But as we drove through the night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that part of me was still back there, in that bedroom, talking to shadows and setting the table for ghosts.
Some delusions, I realized, are harder to leave behind than others.
Even when we know they’re killing us.
