We sat in my car for hours, rain streaking down the windows. My mother — alive, trembling, thinner than I remembered — told me she’d faked her death.
“It wasn’t safe anymore,” she said. “Your father isn’t who you think he is.”
She spoke of threats, of strange men watching the house, of her car brakes mysteriously failing days before her “accident.” When she confronted my father about his business trips and hidden accounts, things spiraled. “I knew he’d never stop,” she said. “So I disappeared before he could finish what he started.”
I wanted to believe her. But every word felt like a fracture in reality.
Then her phone — her old phone — buzzed. The screen glowed with an unknown number. Her face drained of color. “He knows,” she whispered.
The next morning, my father was at my door. His expression was calm — too calm. “You’ve been through enough,” he said, eyes scanning the room. “Stop chasing ghosts.”
But when his phone lit up on the counter, I saw it: a voicemail notification from Mom’s number. He slipped it into his pocket before I could react.
Later that day, I found a silver locket near her grave. Inside — a picture of her smiling with a man who wasn’t my father. The back was engraved: Forever Yours — E.
That night, another text came through.
“If you want the truth, come to the old lighthouse. Midnight.”
When I arrived, a man was waiting — Ethan. “She trusted me,” he said.
Then footsteps echoed behind me. My father. He threw an envelope at my feet. Inside — photos of Mom and Ethan together. “She didn’t run from me,” he said. “She ran because she was caught.”
Before I could speak, my father’s phone buzzed again. A text from Mom’s number: Stop lying to her.
Outside, a black car idled, headlights slicing through the fog. No driver. No footprints. In the passenger seat — her coat.
By dawn, the police found the car empty. The remains in her coffin? Human — but not hers.
I still get texts from her number. Blank messages at midnight.
Last week, one said only:
“I love you.”
Maybe it was scheduled. Maybe not. But when I drive past the cemetery, I swear I see her under the willow tree. Watching. Waiting.
If someone you loved reached out after death — would you answer? And if you did… how sure would you be it was really them?