My son asked if his father, my dead husband, loved my best friend more than me.
It started when Mark died.
Linda, my lifelong friend, stepped in to take care of everything. But her help quickly turned into a bizarre performance.
She became the star of my tragedy, plastering social media with tributes that were more about her than him. She was the public face of grief, the “other widow,” while I was too shattered to even function.
She was erasing me. And I was letting her.
But she never imagined I’d learn to play her game better than she did, and I was about to use her own audience to give her the public takedown she so richly deserved.
The Day the World Stopped: A Perfectly Ordinary Tuesday
The coffee maker gurgled its final, satisfying sigh. I poured the dark liquid into two mugs, the ceramic warm against my hands. One for me, black. One for Mark, with a splash of the oat milk he’d inexplicably become obsessed with over the last year. “Tastes cleaner,” he’d said, as if our twenty-five years of shared whole milk had been some kind of dairy-based sin.
“Morning,” he mumbled, shuffling into the kitchen. His hair was sticking up in the back, a silvered crown of chaos I knew my fingers could tame in seconds. He kissed the top of my head, his lips warm, his chin scratching my scalp with its morning stubble. It was the same kiss he’d given me every morning for a quarter of a century. A small, perfect, utterly mundane anchor to my day.
He took his mug and leaned against the counter, scrolling through his phone. “Big meeting with the Henderson group today,” he said, not looking up. “Wish me luck.”
“You don’t need luck,” I said, sipping my coffee. “You’ve got this.” I was a freelance graphic designer, working from a small office upstairs. My job was to make things look good. Mark’s job, as a senior architect, was to make things stand. We were a good team.
He smiled, a quick, genuine flash of the boy I met in college. “Thanks, Sar.” He drained his mug, rinsed it, and placed it in the dishwasher. Another kiss, this one on the lips, tasting of coffee and the future. “See you tonight. Love you.”
“Love you more,” I called after him as the door clicked shut. The house settled into its usual daytime quiet. I took my coffee upstairs, ready to wrestle with a logo for a new organic dog food company. It was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday.
The phone rang at 1:17 PM. I remember the exact time because I was saving a file, and the timestamp burned itself onto my screen. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Is this Sarah Miller?” a calm, professional voice asked.
“Yes,” I said, my pen still hovering over a sketch of a happy golden retriever.
“This is Joan from Connelly & Wright Architecture. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. There’s been an incident involving your husband, Mark. An ambulance is on its way to Mercy General Hospital. You should get there as soon as you can.”
The world didn’t tilt. It just… stopped. The pen fell from my hand, leaving a long, black slash across the dog’s happy face.
The Unraveling
My keys felt alien in my hand, the metal cold and sharp. I don’t remember deciding to drive, I was just suddenly in my car, the engine running. The familiar streets of our suburban neighborhood looked like a movie set, flat and unreal. Every stop sign was a personal affront, every red light a physical blow. Get there. Get there now.
The emergency room was a cacophony of beeps, quiet crying, and the sharp, clean smell of antiseptic. A nurse with tired eyes led me to a small, windowless room designated for “family.” The quiet in there was louder than the noise outside. I sat on a vinyl chair that stuck to the back of my legs, staring at a poster on the wall about the warning signs of a stroke. My own heart was a frantic bird beating against my ribs.
It wasn’t long. A doctor with a kind face and an impossibly sad expression came in and sat across from me. He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. He used words like “massive,” “sudden,” and “coronary event.” He said, “We did everything we could.” He said, “He was likely gone before he even hit the floor.”
I heard the words, but they didn’t connect. It was like listening to a weather report for a city I’d never visit. I just nodded. I think I said, “Okay.”
He left me there, and the silence rushed back in. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just sat, suspended in a thick, invisible jelly of disbelief. My phone buzzed in my purse. I ignored it. It buzzed again, insistent. I finally fumbled for it, my fingers clumsy and useless. It was a text from my best friend, Linda.
Heard there was an accident. On my way. Don’t be alone.
Before I could even process how she knew, the door to the small room opened and she was there. Her face, usually a mask of vibrant energy, was pale and drawn. She didn’t say anything. She just crossed the room in three long strides and wrapped her arms around me. It was only then, crushed against the familiar scent of her perfume, that the first crack appeared in my frozen composure. A single, hot tear escaped and slid down my cheek.
The Gathering Storm
Linda drove my car home. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the world slide by, still a stranger to it all. She held my hand, her grip firm and steady. “I’ve got you,” she said, her voice a low anchor in the swirling chaos of my mind. “I’ll handle everything.”
And she did.
By the time we walked through my front door, she was already on her phone, her voice a model of crisp efficiency. “He’s gone,” I heard her say to her husband, her tone hushed but controlled. “Yes. I’m with Sarah now. She’s in shock. Can you start a call tree?”
The house began to fill. First our kids, Jake and Mia, home from school, their faces crumpling in bewildered horror as Linda and I told them. I held them, but I felt like I was made of glass, hollow and fragile. Linda took over, guiding them to the couch, getting them water, speaking to them in low, soothing tones while I just stood there, swaying on my feet.
Neighbors arrived with casseroles and sad eyes. Friends from work, from college, from the kids’ school. The house hummed with the low murmur of grief. And through it all, Linda was the unflappable general. She intercepted people at the door, accepted their food, took their coats, and updated them in hushed whispers.
“She’s just shattered,” I heard her tell my cousin, her voice dripping with a proprietary sadness. “I’m just trying to keep her standing.”
I drifted through the rooms, a ghost in my own home. People would touch my arm and murmur things. “So sorry for your loss, Sarah.” “If you need anything at all.” I would nod, but the words bounced off me. The only person they seemed to really talk to was Linda. She held court in my kitchen, recounting the story of how she heard, how she rushed to the hospital, how she was the one to bring me home. She was the narrator of my tragedy.
The First Stone
Late that night, after the last visitor had trickled out, after my children had cried themselves to sleep, I lay in my empty bed. The silence was a physical weight on my chest. I stared at Mark’s pillow, at the indentation where his head should have been. The finality of it was a cliff edge I couldn’t stop looking over.
My phone, which Linda had plugged in for me, lit up on the nightstand. A notification from Facebook. I had dozens of them, but this one was a direct tag. My thumb moved on its own, clumsy and slow.
The screen filled with a photo. It was a sunny, vibrant picture of Linda and Mark on a boat, taken years ago on a lake trip. They were laughing, heads thrown back, Mark’s arm slung casually around her shoulder. I remembered that day. I had been the one to take the picture.
But I wasn’t in it. And the caption, written by Linda, was not about me.
“My heart is shattered into a million pieces,” it began. “The world lost one of the greats today, and I lost a piece of my own soul. So many adventures, so many secrets. Thirty years of friendship, gone in a flash. Rest easy, my friend. I don’t know how I’ll do this without you.”
I read it once. Then twice. I don’t know how I’ll do this without you. The words seemed to lift off the screen. It was an epitaph for a different kind of relationship. It was a public declaration.
A cold, heavy knot formed in the pit of my stomach. It was the first thing I had truly felt since the doctor said, “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t just grief. It was a deep, unsettling confusion that felt dangerously close to something else.
Before I could name the feeling, my son, Jake, appeared in the doorway, his face illuminated by the glow of his own phone. “Mom,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Look what Aunt Linda is posting.”
He stepped into the room and showed me his screen. She had created a photo album. “Memories of Mark.” There were dozens of pictures, mostly of Mark with the kids. But the cover photo was a video. Mark, flushed and happy, giving a toast at Linda’s wedding ten years ago.
“To Linda,” he was saying, his voice full of warmth. “My partner-in-crime, my oldest friend, the sister I got to choose.”
Linda’s caption below the video read: He always knew how much our bond meant. A connection like no other.
I scrolled down through the comments. Dozens of hearts and crying emojis. Then a comment from a mutual friend, someone I’d known for years. “Oh, Linda, you two were so close. I can only imagine your pain. Thinking of you.”
Thinking of her.
I looked from my son’s phone to the empty space beside me in the bed. Linda hadn’t just posted a tribute. She had laid a claim.
The Performance of Grief: The Director’s Chair
The funeral home smelled of dust and lilies. A man in a dark suit spoke to me in a voice so soft it was like being wrapped in felt. He used words like “arrangements” and “vessel” and “service.” I stared at a catalog of caskets, the polished wood gleaming under the fluorescent lights. They looked like expensive, horrifying furniture.
“The mahogany is beautiful, don’t you think?” Linda’s voice cut through my haze. She was sitting next to me, her hand resting on my back. “Mark and I always joked that if we went out, we’d want to go out in style. He would have hated that cheap-looking oak.”
I blinked, looking at the casket she was pointing to. It was ornate, with elaborate carvings. It felt… loud. “I don’t know,” I managed, my own voice a stranger. “It seems like a lot.”
“Nonsense,” she said, giving my back a firm pat. “He was not a minimalist, Sarah. We have to honor who he was.” She turned to the funeral director. “We’ll take the mahogany.”
It was like that with everything. The flowers. I vaguely motioned toward a simple arrangement of white roses. Linda shook her head. “Too somber. Mark was so full of life. He loved color. Remember that trip to the botanical gardens? He was obsessed with those birds of paradise.” She ordered an explosion of tropical flowers that felt more appropriate for a cruise ship departure than a memorial.
The music. I suggested a classical piece Mark had loved. Linda countered with a 70s rock ballad. “It was our song,” she said, her eyes misting over. “He’d put it on the jukebox at the bar in college every single time.”
Every decision became a battle I didn’t have the energy to fight. My shock had curdled into a thick, exhausting fog. Arguing about flowers felt like a betrayal of the enormous, silent grief that filled all the space in my head. So I let her. I let her direct. I just nodded, my silence her blank check.
The final straw was the photo for the memorial program. Linda spent an hour scrolling through her phone, dismissing pictures I’d sent her. “No, not that one, his eyes look weird.” “This one’s blurry.” Finally, she found the one. “Oh, this is perfect. This is so him.”
She turned her phone around. It was a photo from a Fourth of July barbecue a few years back. Mark was at the grill, laughing, holding up a spatula. Linda was standing next to him, her arm looped through his, beaming at the camera. My hand, holding a plate of half-eaten potato salad, was visible at the very edge of the frame. It was the only part of me that had made the cut.
A Eulogy for Two
The church was packed. I sat in the front pew, flanked by my children, their small, trembling shoulders pressed against my sides. I felt a thousand pairs of eyes on us, a heavy blanket of pity. Linda sat on Jake’s other side, completing our broken family circle. She reached over and squeezed my hand right as the service began. “I’m here,” she whispered. It sounded like a promise and a threat.
When the time came for the eulogy, the pastor said, “And now, Mark’s oldest and dearest friend, Linda, would like to share some words.”
Linda walked to the pulpit with a practiced grace. She unfolded a piece of paper but barely looked at it. She spoke for fifteen minutes.
She started with their college days, telling a hilarious, detailed story about a disastrous road trip to Florida. She painted a vivid picture of bad directions, a broken-down car, and sleeping on a beach. She told it so well, the congregation chuckled. But the way she told it, it was a story about the two of them, an adventure starring Linda and Mark. She failed to mention that I was also in that car, that I was the one who had to talk a grumpy mechanic into fixing our fan belt for twenty dollars. In her version, I simply wasn’t there.
She moved on to their thirties, telling a story about how Mark had helped her through her divorce. “He was my rock,” she said, her voice catching, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “He sat with me for hours, just letting me cry. He told me I was strong enough to get through it. He was the one who gave me the courage to start over.”
She was stealing my memories and polishing them for public display. He had supported her, yes, but he had supported her as my husband, as our friend. We had both been there.
The final part of the eulogy was addressed to me and the kids. “Sarah,” she said, looking directly at me, her eyes shining with tears. “No one could have loved him more than you. But I want you to know, I loved him too. In a different way. A friendship that deep… it’s its own kind of love story.”
She was positioning herself not as a supporting character, but as a parallel lead. The other great love of his life. I looked out at the faces in the pews. They were rapt. They were crying with her. They believed her. I felt my own grief being diluted, crowded out by her grand, public performance of it. I squeezed my children’s hands, my knuckles white.
The Receiving Line
Back at the house, the air was thick with the smell of baked ziti and murmured condolences. The wake was supposed to be for us, for the family. It quickly became Linda’s stage.
She stood near the entryway to the kitchen, a tragic and commanding figure. As people came in, she was the one they went to first. She would hug them, her head on their shoulder, her body shaking with what looked like profound sorrow.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she’d say, as if it were her home. “It means so much to the family.”
My aunt Martha came over to me, her face a mask of concern. “Sarah, honey, how are you holding up?” Before I could form a single, coherent syllable, Linda was at my side, one arm wrapping around my waist.
“She’s being so brave, but she’s just exhausted,” Linda announced to my aunt. “I’m making sure she eats something. We’re all just taking it one minute at a time.” Linda answered for me, her voice full of a tenderness that felt completely false. She was my official spokesperson.
I tried to escape to the living room to speak with Mark’s college roommate, who had flown in from California. We were sharing a quiet memory about a stupid prank Mark had pulled when Linda materialized with a tray of mini quiches.
“You have to eat,” she said, pushing the tray toward me. Then she turned to Mark’s friend. “Oh, David, it’s so good you could make it. Do you remember that time in Aspen when Mark tried to ski backward down the entire mountain to impress me? I swear, I thought I was going to die laughing.”
The conversation shifted. The quiet moment was gone, replaced by another chapter in the epic saga of Linda and Mark. I watched as she held him captive with her story, her hands animated, her voice full of life as she described my dead husband. I felt like I was fading, becoming translucent, while she grew more solid and vibrant with every story she told. She was feeding on my grief, and it was making her glow.
The Digital Shrine
That night, after everyone was gone and the house was once again a tomb of plastic-wrapped dishes, I found myself doing the one thing I knew I shouldn’t. I opened Facebook.
It was worse than I could have imagined. Linda had not been idle. She had posted again. And again. It was a series now. A daily “tribute.”
The first new post was a picture of her and Mark at our wedding, dancing. They were both smiling, caught in a moment of joy. He was the best dancer, the caption read. I’ll miss my partner on the dance floor more than words can say. #friendship #soulmate
The hashtag hit me like a slap. Soulmate.
I scrolled down. Another post. A picture of a sunset over a lake. Mark and I always promised we’d watch the sunset from this very spot one last time. Guess I’m doing it for both of us tonight. It’s beautiful, but it’s not the same without you.
It was a digital shrine, and she was the high priestess. Each post was a carefully curated brick in the wall of a narrative she was building, one that intertwined her life with his so completely that it was becoming difficult to see where one ended and the other began. She was colonizing my memories, one status update at a time.
I felt a hot, helpless anger rise in my throat. It was a violation. It was all so public, so performative. As I was about to throw my phone across the room, a new comment popped up under the sunset picture. It was from our aunt Martha, the one who had tried to talk to me at the wake.
Her comment wasn’t addressed to me. It was for Linda.
“You poor thing,” it read. “You need to make sure you’re taking care of yourself too, Linda. It’s easy for people to forget in all of this, but you lost your soulmate too. In some ways, this must be even harder for you, without the rights of a wife. My heart just breaks for you.”
The Other Widow: An Invasion of Relics
A week after the funeral, Linda showed up at my door holding two empty cardboard boxes. “Ready?” she asked, her smile gentle. “I thought we could make a start on Mark’s office. No pressure. Just when you feel up to it.”
I didn’t feel up to it. Mark’s office was the last untouched part of our house. It still smelled like him—a faint mix of old books, coffee, and the woodsy scent of his aftershave. Closing that door felt like sealing a tomb. But I was tired of saying no, tired of the gentle pressure that felt anything but. I nodded and let her in.
We started with his closet. I pulled out his favorite gray sweater, the one with the worn patch on the elbow. I lifted it to my face, breathing in the last traces of him.
“Oh, he wore that the day I told him I was getting a divorce from Tom,” Linda said, her voice soft and nostalgic. She was folding his T-shirts into a neat pile. “He brought over a bottle of wine and just listened to me vent for hours. He was so, so sweet to me that night.”
I placed the sweater in a box I’d labeled ‘keep.’ Every item I touched, she had a story for. His worn leather briefcase? He’d used that to carry the legal paperwork she needed help with. That ridiculous singing fish plaque on the wall? A gag gift from her after they’d spent a weekend fishing. A photo of him on my desk from our trip to Italy? She pointed out that she was the one who recommended the restaurant in the background.
She wasn’t just helping me pack. She was curating his life, attaching her name to every memory, every object. It was a quiet, systematic invasion. She was planting her flag on my past. I felt a cold, hard anger beginning to solidify in my chest, pushing aside the soft edges of my grief. This room was my sanctuary, and she was turning it into a museum of her own importance.
The Poisoned Story
Linda’s focus began to shift from me to the children. She would pick them up from school “to give me a break,” taking them for ice cream or to the park. I was grateful for the space, for the hours of quiet. I didn’t realize what she was filling that space with.
I came downstairs one afternoon to find my daughter, Mia, on a video call with her best friend. Mia was fourteen, and her grief was a quiet, brittle thing.
“Yeah, it’s really sad,” Mia was saying, her voice small. “Aunt Linda was telling me that Dad was secretly planning to teach her how to sail this summer. It was supposed to be their special thing. They had this whole plan to buy a small boat together someday.”
I stopped on the stairs, my hand gripping the banister. Mark and I had talked about buying a small sailboat for years. It was our plan. It was the thing we were going to do when the kids were out of the house. Our “someday” project.
Linda had taken our dream, a dream I had shared with my husband for a decade, and recast herself as the star. She had presented it to my daughter as a secret, special bond between her and her father, a world that I was not a part of.
She wasn’t just stealing my memories anymore. She was stealing my husband from my children, creating a new, revised version of their father where “Aunt Linda” was his primary confidante, his partner in dreams. She was poisoning their history, drop by insidious drop. I felt a surge of protective fury so intense it made me dizzy. This wasn’t about my grief anymore. This was about my family.
The Public Offering
The ultimate violation arrived not with a knock at the door, but with a notification on my phone. A friend had shared a link on my Facebook wall.
“Thinking of you, Sarah! So glad Linda is doing this for you all.”
I clicked the link. It took me to a GoFundMe page. The title was “Support for the Family of Mark Miller.” My stomach lurched. Linda hadn’t said a word to me about this.
The goal was set at $25,000. But it was the photo and the description that made the air leave my lungs.
The main campaign photo was from a camping trip we had all taken a few years ago. It was a beautiful shot of Mark with his arms around Jake and Mia, all of them grinning, the woods behind them. Linda was there too, squeezed in next to Jake, her arm thrown around his shoulder. It was a perfect family photo, except for one detail. I was the one who had taken it. I was not in the picture. From the perspective of anyone looking at this page, our family consisted of a father, two children, and this loving, ever-present “aunt.”
The text, written by Linda, was a masterpiece of narcissistic altruism.
It began, “For thirty years, Mark Miller was my rock, my confidante, my other half. His sudden passing has left a hole in my life that will never be filled.” It went on for two paragraphs detailing their incredible friendship before it even mentioned us. “Now, his beautiful wife Sarah and their two wonderful children, Jake and Mia, are left to navigate this world without him. They are devastated. As the person who was there with them from the first moment of this nightmare, I am asking for your help. I’m going to make sure this family is supported, just as Mark always supported me.”
I felt physically sick. I wasn’t just erased; I had been demoted. I was now a supporting character in the story of my own family’s tragedy, a project being managed by the “other widow.” She had monetized her performance, turning our loss into her cause.
A Question of Loyalty
That evening, the house was quiet. The GoFundMe had already raised over six thousand dollars. Messages of support kept pouring in, almost all of them praising Linda for her strength and selflessness. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the screen, the rage a living thing inside me. It was so complete, so calculated. She had built a fortress of public opinion around herself, brick by brick. How could I ever fight that?
The door creaked open. It was Jake, my sixteen-year-old son. He looked older than he had a month ago. Taller, but also smaller, somehow. He came and sat on the edge of the bed, not looking at me, just staring at his hands.
“Mom?” he asked, his voice quiet and strained. It was a tone I hadn’t heard from him before. It was heavy with a pain that was different from grief. It was confusion.
I waited.
He finally looked at me, his eyes searching mine for an answer he was terrified to hear.
“Did Dad… did he love Aunt Linda more than you?”
The question hit me with the force of a physical blow. I couldn’t breathe.
He rushed on, the words tumbling out. “She told me today. When she dropped me off from practice. She said that she and Dad had a special connection. A soulmate thing. That it was something nobody else, not even you, could ever really understand. She said that’s why this is so hard for her. Is it… is it true?”
The Reckoning: The Longest Night
Jake’s question hung in the air of my bedroom, a toxic cloud. Did Dad love Aunt Linda more than you? After he finally went to his own room, the question stayed behind, clinging to the curtains, hiding in the shadows.
I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. My grief, which had been a heavy, suffocating blanket, was now a fire. Every nerve ending felt live, sparking with a white-hot rage. I paced the floor of my bedroom, from the window overlooking the dark, silent street to the empty side of the bed.
My mind became a movie theater, playing a highlight reel of Linda’s greatest hits. Linda at the hospital, taking my keys, taking control. Linda choosing the casket. Linda at the pulpit, telling a story about a road trip for two that had been for three. Linda’s arm around my son in a photograph meant to represent my family. Linda’s words, seeping into my children’s ears, poisoning their memories, positioning herself as the great, tragic love of their father’s life.
A connection nobody else could understand.
The sheer, breathtaking arrogance of it. The cruelty. She hadn’t just centered her own grief; she had actively, deliberately, and systematically erased mine. She had looked at my shattered life, at my grieving children, and seen an opportunity. An opportunity for what? For attention? For sympathy? To finally be the star of a story she had only ever guest-featured in?
Sometime before dawn, the rage cooled into something hard and clear. It settled in my bones, a core of pure, unshakeable resolve. The fear was gone. The paralysis was gone. The fog had lifted. I knew, with absolute certainty, what I had to do. This wasn’t about being grateful anymore. This was about survival.
The Unraveling of Gratitude
She arrived the next morning at nine, right on schedule, holding two large coffees from Starbucks. She used her key to let herself in, a cheerful “Yoo-hoo, I’ve got caffeine!” echoing in the hall.
I met her in the kitchen. I was sitting at the table, my hands wrapped around a cold mug of my own coffee.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, placing a cup in front of me. “I figured you could use this. The GoFundMe is up to almost eight thousand dollars! Isn’t that amazing?”
“We need to talk about the GoFundMe, Linda,” I said. My voice was calm. Too calm.
Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second. “What about it? It’s a huge success.”
“I need you to take it down,” I said.
She stared at me, her head tilted. “Take it down? Sarah, that’s crazy. That’s money for you and the kids.”
“The picture,” I said, my voice still level. “The words. You didn’t ask me. You wrote about yourself. You put up a picture without me in it.”
The look of gentle concern she had perfected over the past weeks snapped into place. “Oh, honey,” she said, her voice dripping with pity. “You’re not thinking clearly. You’re grieving. I found a beautiful picture of Mark and the kids. I’ve been running myself ragged trying to help you, and you’re upset about a photo?”
“I’m upset that you’re making my husband’s death about you,” I said.
That’s when her composure cracked. Her face hardened. “About me? Are you kidding me? Who sat with you in the hospital? Who planned the entire funeral while you were walking around like a zombie? Who is taking care of your kids, your house, your everything? I’m sorry, Sarah, but I’m grieving too! I lost him too! I’m allowed to be sad!”
“You’re not just sad,” I said, the calmness finally breaking, the heat rising. “You’re performing. It’s a show, and you’ve made yourself the star.”
The Verdict
Linda laughed, a short, sharp, incredulous sound. “Oh, I see. So I’m not grieving correctly for you? I should just bottle it all up and be the quiet, supportive friend in the background? Is that what you want?”
That was it. The dam broke.
“What I want,” I said, standing up from the table, my voice shaking with a fury that felt bottomless, “is for you to stop acting like you were his other wife. What I want is for you to not have stood at his funeral and told a story about a trip you took with us and edit me out of it like I was some annoying extra!”
I took a step toward her. “You sat in this house, my house, and you accepted condolences like you were the widow. You posted pictures of him with hashtags like ‘soulmate’ while my side of the bed was still cold! You are so deep inside your own drama that you have no idea what you’ve done!”
Tears of rage were streaming down my face now. “But I’m going to tell you. You took my children, my grieving, confused children, and you poisoned their memories of their father. You whispered stories to them to make yourself seem more important, to create some tragic, secret romance that never existed!”
My voice cracked on the last words, the pain of it raw and overwhelming. “My son. My sixteen-year-old son came to me last night and asked me if his father loved you more than he loved me. That is what you have done, Linda. With your posts and your stories and your goddamn GoFundMe. You didn’t just try to steal my husband’s memory. You tried to steal him from his own kids.”
Linda stood frozen, her face chalk-white. The defensive anger had vanished, replaced by a look of genuine shock. It was as if, for the very first time, she was hearing the sound of her own actions. She opened her mouth, then closed it. There were no words. There was no defense.
“I want you to leave,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, ragged whisper. “And I want my key back.”
The Silence
The silence in the kitchen was absolute. It pressed in on us, heavy and final. For a long moment, Linda didn’t move. She just stared at me, her face a mess of confusion and hurt. Tears began to well in her eyes, real ones this time, devoid of any performance.
Slowly, she reached into her purse and pulled out her key ring. Her fingers fumbled as she worked my house key off the chain. She slid it across the granite countertop. The metallic scrape was the only sound in the room.
“I did it because I loved him,” she whispered, her voice broken. “Mark would have wanted me here. He would have wanted me to take care of you.”
She turned and walked out of the kitchen. A moment later, I heard the front door open, and then click shut.
And then, silence. A profound, deafening silence.
I stood alone in the center of my kitchen, my heart hammering against my ribs, the echo of my own rage still ringing in my ears. I had done it. I had reclaimed my house. I had ended the performance.
But as the silence stretched, her last words slithered back into my mind. Mark would have wanted me here.
Had she been right? Had I, in my fury and pain, just kicked out the one person my husband would have trusted to see me through the darkest time of my life? Or had I, in one brutal, necessary act of self-preservation, finally started to save myself?
I looked around the quiet room, at the coffee she had brought me still sitting on the table, and for the first time in weeks, I had no idea what to do next. I had won the battle, but I was utterly, terrifyingly alone
About the Author
