Maybe she fell asleep in the guest room. Maybe she just—
A thump.
Then another.
Not heavy. Rhythmic. Too… intimate.
My blood chilled.
I rose, like something pulled me forward by the throat. I climbed the stairs, slow as a prayer. The hallway stretched like a graveyard path. The door to our bedroom—his bedroom now—was cracked open.
And I saw.
Elizabeth, naked, straddling Edmund. Her red nails dug into his chest like claws. Her head tilted back in a mess of curls. And Edmund—my husband, my life partner of 30 years—grunting beneath her like an animal.
My legs stopped working. My mouth went dry.
She moaned loud, shameless, her voice like a blade across my spine.
“Ohh… Brother-in-law—don’t stop. Fill me. Ruin me like she never let you.”
Edmund groaned, “You’re perfect. Not like her. You’re everything, Lizzy—”
I ran.
I didn’t cry. I ran. Straight to the downstairs bathroom and vomited until my ribs cramped.
The sound of them still echoed in my ears, louder than sirens.
“Harder—make me forget she ever existed!”
“You were always the one, Lizzy. Always.”
He was fifty. She was forty-five.