My husband forgot his medication at home,

The woman standing beside my husband on the stone walkway was my younger sister, Clara.

My breath seized in my throat, hot and agonizing. A high-pitched ringing pierced my ears, drowning out the dull hum of passing traffic. It was impossible. It defied every law of nature and grief. Clara was dead. We had held her funeral six years ago. I had stood in the pouring rain at Oakridge Cemetery, clutching Eliam’s arm while our family lowered an empty casket into the earth after her car was pulled from the bottom of the Blackwood River, her body supposedly swept away by the raging current.

Yet there she stood in broad daylight.

Her golden-brown hair, once worn long and unruly, was cropped neatly at her shoulders. She wore a simple charcoal coat and dark trousers, looking thinner and paler than the vibrant twenty-two-year-old girl I had mourned for over two thousand days, but there was no mistaking the arch of her eyebrows or the faint dimple in her left cheek.

Eliam reached out, his hand resting gently against her shoulder. Clara nodded, clutching a thick beige folder against her chest. She looked anxious, casting nervous glances toward the street. Every protective instinct Eliam possessed was etched across his face—the same quiet, steadfast concern he usually reserved for me.

Why was my husband standing beside my dead sister?

I shrank lower into the driver’s seat, pulling my baseball cap down over my brow, terrified they would spot my car. But their attention remained fixed on their conversation. Eliam checked his wristwatch, spoke a few final words, and pulled Clara into a brief, protective embrace. He walked back to his vehicle, his stride measured and calm. Clara lingered for a moment, watching him drive away before turning and walking down the sidewalk toward a quiet residential avenue behind the facility.

Eliam hadn’t gone inside to work. He hadn't been attending corporate meetings. He had taken a week of leave from his executive post to meet the sister I had spent six agonizing years weeping for.

My hands shook so violently I could barely turn the ignition. Eliam’s car took a left toward the highway, heading in the direction of our home. Clara was walking on foot.

I didn't follow my husband. I needed answers that he was clearly unwilling to give me.