Lydia grinning in a green waitressing dress with a brown apron . . .
Lydia dipping a crinkle-cut french fry into a chocolate malt . . .
Lydia cheesing to the camera in her colleague’s chef hat . . .
Add ten years and subtract twenty pounds maybe, but her features match the woman from today. I can’t convince myself otherwise, even if I wanted to.
Everything about Lydia—then and now—is average and unremarkable. Tragically forgettable. And that’s what everyone did.
Her search was a local sensation for a hot minute . . . and then people moved on.
They always do.
Luca moved on, too.
He couldn’t have lived in the shadow of his past the rest of his life. That wouldn’t have been fair to him. He did his due diligence as a spouse. He searched for her in accordance with Oregon’s evidence-of-death statute, placing notices in national papers and collecting as much evidence (circumstantial, concrete, or otherwise) as he could to prove she was never coming back. It wasn’t until the court system declared her dead years after her disappearance that he felt he could so much as think about marrying someone else. To top it off, their entire relationship was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it situation. They were young and impulsive. A quickie wedding in Vegas, and they were off to the races.
Luca hadn’t known her but a handful of months before she vanished.
The entire thing was a nightmare for him—all the man wanted was to grieve quietly and move on, to no longer live in the shadow of what might have been.
It’s possible there were things he didn’t know about her past, things he couldn’t possibly have gleaned in such a short amount of time.
I study Lydia’s face a few minutes more, darken my phone, and slump back into the pitch-black stillness of this room.
My attention is possessed by a picture window I’ve walked by a hundred times, one that presents a view that takes my breath away no matter the time or day or season of the year. It’s the reason we bought this house. That and the privacy. Over the course of a year, what started out as a midnineties nightmare with hunter-green and burgundy wallpaper and a forest’s worth of oak trim transformed into a serene daydream of a home. Bathed in natural light, with creamy walls and chic furnishings, I couldn’t have wished for a more perfect place to grow old with Luca.
The beautiful vision past the window fades away. I no longer see the moonlight painting crashing waves or the thick trees that protect and enshrine our property to the north and south. I don’t eye my daughter’s playset—the one Luca designed from scratch and had custom built. Nor do I notice our beloved miniature greenhouse or the swing bench we’ve rocked on while reading book after book to Elsie.
All that remains is a deep, dark, endless void of night sky.
I married Luca knowing I was his second wife, well aware of what happened before we built our life together. But nothing could have prepared me for this. And not knowing what happens next for us, for our family . . . is unnerving.
Terrifying in its own way.
There isn’t a precedent for this sort of thing. For now we’re stuck in this murky gray area between doing the right thing and preserving what remains of the life we’ve built.
Breaking out of my trance, I wake my phone and pull up the local news. Not a single headline mentions that a formerly missing woman has been found. Lydia—wherever she’s been—must have come here first. A move that suggests she wanted to see Luca before anyone else . . .
I toss my blanket aside and winch myself up from the sofa. I carry my untouched tea to the kitchen and dump the cooled liquid down the sink. Wasted, unappreciated, gone forever.
I worry my life will hold the same fate once Luca learns his first wife has come back for him. It’s only a matter of time before he learns this, and while I should be the one to tell him, every time I try to form the words, they get stuck.
Once I’m settled into bed, I text my husband a quick good night and my nightly reminder that I love him, lest he forget. It’s a word that wasn’t often spoken in my household. In fact, I distinctly recall mustering up the courage to say it to my father at my mother’s funeral. I didn’t think he heard me the first time, so I cleared my throat and said it again. Louder. His response? Yes, Merritt. I heard you.
My phone vibrates from the nightstand as a call from Luca lights my screen.
“You’re up late,” I answer.
He exhales into the receiver. “Can’t sleep.”
An icy blast cracks through my veins and my exhaustion fades, replaced with a quick jolt of adrenaline. What if he knows? What if she found his number and called him? What if he’s hiding from me the very same thing I’m hiding from him?
I sit up and position a pillow behind my back before resting against the headboard. “Need to talk about it?”
“Just wanted to hear your voice.” His hotel room TV drones in the background, hardly enough to distract from the underlying dissonance in his tone.
I want to know what’s really on his mind.
I also don’t want to know.
“That’s all?” I manage a teasing chuckle, trying to keep this light.
“That and I’m just thinking about tomorrow’s presentation.” A yawn paints his voice. He could fall asleep if he’d let himself, I’m sure. “Going over the last one in my head. Trying to figure out what I could do differently this time.”
Rolling to my side, I fixate on the five-by-seven family photo on my nightstand. I chose every outfit in that shoot, from the kelly-green tie hanging from Luca’s neck to the antique diamond dahlia pendant dangling from mine. It had to be perfect—and it was.
It’s dark in here, but I make out the outlines of our exuberant faces. Even if I couldn’t, I have the image memorized by heart. It’s one of my favorites—taken the week after we found out we were going to be a family of four and a month before our accountant informed us things were worse than we initially were told.
“I’m glad you called.” I slide the frame off the table and tuck it under my pillow. For now, I’ll soak up these last moments of pretending like everything’s normal and nothing’s wrong.
Lydia’s return is going to change things. Though for better or worse, it’s impossible to know yet.
Only one thing is certain—the second my husband gets home, our lives are never going to be the same.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LYDIA
“Good morning, angel. Sleep well?” I find Delphine doing yoga in the living room shortly after eight o’clock the next morning.
The overpowering aroma of freshly brewing coffee mingles with the cocktail of new-age scents already permeating the air, and my stomach furls.
“Hope I didn’t wake you. Tried to keep my music low . . .” She dials down the volume on her Bluetooth speaker before stretching her arms behind her back. “Oh, and I’m so sorry. I was thinking we could hit up the vital records office today, but I just checked my website, and someone booked two back-to-back sessions for this afternoon.”
She offers a sympathetic pout, studying my face.
“It’s fine,” I assure her, swatting a hand and swallowing the relief that bubbles up from my center. I didn’t know we were moving full speed ahead on the government ID thing. I’m not sure what I’d have said had she sprung that trip on me.