Chapter 19 - The Husband I Buried

Now

I made it home with my hands still shaking.

My bag dropped onto the counter with a thud, the sound too loud in the silence, and I gripped the edge of the sink just to steady myself. My reflection in the window looked pale. Ghostlike. As if the life had been drained right out of me.

Now that there was no one around to see me, I stopped pretending I was fine. The tears came hard and fast, spilling out before I could stop them. I pressed my palms to my eyes, but it was no use.

My whole future – everything Luis and I had planned – had been taken from me. Brutally. And I’d spent the last four months pretending I could move on. That the world was still the same.

Well, it wasn’t. It never would be.

Outside, the streets hummed with life. A car horn a few streets over. Birds talking, and the whisper of the breeze. But it all sounded far away, like I was hearing it underwater.

It felt like I was floating above my body, disconnected.

I couldn’t keep this to myself. I would go crazy. I needed to talk to someone, to prove I wasn’t losing it. Someone who would actually listen.

I wiped my face with the sleeve of my jumper, grabbed my phone, and before I could second-guess it, tapped Jessica’s name.

She picked up on the third ring. ‘Mackenzie? I’m at work. Are you OK?’

I relaxed immediately. Jess always sounded calm. Measured. It was part of her training, I guess. She was a psychologist. The good kind, who cared enough to listen instead of just trying to diagnose.

She was the exact person I needed to help make sense of this.

‘I saw him, Jess.’

The words tumbled out before I could stop them.

There was a pause. ‘Who?’

‘Luis.’

Silence. Then I heard the faint creak of her chair, could picture her sitting up straighter, that little flick she did with her hair when she was uneasy.

‘Mackenzie . . .’

‘No, listen to me. I saw him. On the train. It wasn’t just some lookalike. It was him. Same hair, same build. The way he stood – God, Jess, it was exactly the same.’

The quiet on the other end stretched on for too long.

After Luis died, Jessica had tried to prepare me for the different stages of grief, but I didn’t seem to be moving through them.

And there was nothing that could prepare me for this.

When Jess spoke again, her voice was soft but deliberate. ‘Honey . . . we’ve talked about this. Grief can do strange things. You’ve been running on fumes for months. Barely sleeping. Working too much. It’s normal to—’

‘It wasn’t a trick.’ I could hear the edge creeping into my voice, sharp and trembling. ‘He was right there, Jess. On the platform. He looked right at me.’

‘And did he talk to you?’

‘No, I—’ The question hit me like a slap. My mouth opened, then closed again. I thought of that moment – the brief flicker of his eyes meeting mine, cold and blank, before he turned away. I felt the sting of his rejection all over again. This was a man I was still crying over four months later, and he couldn’t even stop to acknowledge me.

‘I’m just saying,’ continued Jessica, ‘if it really was Luis, don’t you think he would’ve said something?’

‘Maybe,’ I said finally. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything. If he was in a car accident, maybe he had a head injury. Maybe he doesn’t remember me. Maybe he couldn’t talk.’

I hated how desperate I sounded. How easily I reached for something to make sense of it all. It was easier than dealing with the fact that maybe he didn’t want to know me anymore.

Jessica sighed softly, and I knew she was choosing her next words carefully. ‘Or maybe you’re seeing what you need to see. You loved him, Kenz. It’s OK to admit that it still hurts. But sometimes our minds . . . they try to protect us from that pain. You saw someone who reminded you of him. It’s not uncommon. The trick is recognizing it and letting it go.’

‘I know what I saw,’ I whispered. My throat was raw, my voice almost gone. I wasn’t looking for validation. I wanted someone to help me break this down and figure it out. Was he OK? Why was he at Barkley Station?

‘Mackenzie, we buried him. I stood next to you when they lowered the coffin. I watched you throw the first handful of dirt. He’s gone. Your ghosts will keep on haunting you if you don’t learn to let them go.’

Her words were calm. Infuriating.

I wanted to scream. To tell her this wasn’t a hallucination she could neatly categorize or soothe away with therapy-speak. That it was real, whether she believed me or not.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Instead, I stood there, gripping the phone so tightly my fingers hurt. I tried to swallow the lump rising in my throat.

‘Promise me you’ll try to get some rest,’ Jess said finally. ‘You’ve been through enough. Let’s grab dinner again soon, OK?’

‘Sure,’ I said, but it was flat. Hollow. I hung up before she could say anything else.

The silence that followed was brutal.

The hum of the fridge was suddenly deafening. A car passed by outside, the sound drawing closer before fading into the distance. I could smell the faint trace of detergent from the dishcloth by the sink. All of it so normal, so mundane, that it threw the absurdity of what had just happened into even sharper relief.

Jessica didn’t believe me.

Of course she didn’t. She was a psychologist first, a friend second.

Maybe nobody would believe he was alive.

But I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t delusional.

I knew what I’d seen.

And if I was the only one willing to face it – then fine.

If Luis was alive, I’d prove it.

And I’d find out why he’d faked his own death.