The memory of high school feels like a faded photograph—edges curled and colors washed out—but Mike was always the sharpest part of the image. We were young, reckless, and convinced that the world began and ended with us. But my parents saw a different future. Within a week of finding out about us, I was packed into a car and sent to a distant boarding school. No phones, no letters, and eventually, no hope. Silence stretched into years, and years turned into a lifetime.
When I finally returned to my hometown a decade later, everything felt smaller. While catching up with an old friend over coffee, the conversation inevitably drifted to the past. She looked at me with a mix of pity and curiosity and asked, “Want to see who your Mike married?”
My heart hit my ribs like a trapped bird. I didn’t want to look, but the gravity of “what if” was too strong. We drove to a small, upscale boutique grocery store on the edge of town. “His wife runs this place,” my friend whispered, nodding toward the checkout counter.
I walked in alone, my breath hitching in my throat. Standing behind the register was a woman who was breathtakingly elegant, yet she carried a certain sadness in her eyes. As I approached to buy a random bottle of water, our eyes locked. The air in the room felt heavy, frozen in time.
She stared at me for a long beat, her gaze scanning my face with an intensity that felt like she was reading a book she had memorized long ago. Suddenly, she spoke:
“You’re her, aren’t you? You’re the girl from the letters.”
I froze, the water bottle slipping slightly in my hand. “I… I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered.
She leaned over the counter, her voice dropping to a soft, weary whisper. “Mike has a box in the attic. He thinks I don’t know about it. It’s full of sketches of a girl with your eyes and unsent letters addressed to a house that was sold years ago. I’ve spent five years sharing a bed with a man whose heart was permanently checked out before I even met him.”
She didn’t look angry; she looked relieved, as if seeing me finally explained the hollowness of her marriage. “He’s a good man,” she added, her voice trembling. “But he’s a man who lives in a ghost story. And today, the ghost just walked through my front door.”
I left the store without saying another word. As I sat in my car, watching the sunset over the town I once called home, I realized that some loves don’t end—they just haunt the lives of the people who try to replace them.