Chapter 2 - Ghost in the Sunlight
The remainder of that day was a waking nightmare of mundane routine. I called my office, claimed a sudden migraine, and spent the hours pacing the floor of our house.
Every object in our home seemed suddenly alien. The framed photograph from our trip to Florence on the mantelpiece; his reading glasses resting on the nightstand; the wool overcoat hanging in the entryway closet. I searched through his drawers, his desk, the pockets of his discarded blazers. There were no mysterious hotel receipts, no secondary phones, no traces of perfume, no strange credit card statements. If Eliam was leading a double life, he kept its physical evidence far away from our home.
When six o'clock arrived, the garage door rumbled open.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I stood at the kitchen sink, running tap water over a head of lettuce, forcing my spine to remain straight.
Eliam walked in. He looked weary, his hair slightly rumpled, his briefcase carried with that familiar slight slouch.
“Hey,” he sighed, coming up behind me. He rested his chin on my shoulder and wrapped his arms around my waist. “You wouldn’t believe the day I had. They wanted to cut twenty percent from the logistics budget. I spent four hours in Henderson’s office just defending our warehouse personnel.”
I felt the warmth of his chest against my back, the familiar rise and fall of his breathing. A wave of revulsion, mixed with terrifying sorrow, surged up into my throat. How could someone lie while holding the person they loved?
“Sounds exhausting,” I said, keeping my tone light, almost playful, refusing to turn around. “Did you manage to survive without your medication?”
“Yeah, headache kicked in around three, but I drank plenty of water,” he replied casually, letting go of me to open the refrigerator. “I’ll take it before we eat.”
He grabbed the blister pack from the counter, popped a pill, and swallowed it with a glass of tap water. He smiled at me across the island. It was the same open, honest face I had loved for over a decade.
“What would I do without you, Clara?” he said softly.
I swallowed the bile rising in my mouth. “I don't know, Eliam. What would you do?”
We ate dinner. We watched an episode of a crime drama neither of us cared about. We went to bed. I lay awake in the dark, watching the digital numbers on the alarm clock change minute by minute, listening to his deep, rhythmic breathing. He slept like an innocent man.
The next morning, the ritual repeated itself. He kissed my forehead at seven-twenty. “Another long one today, Clara. Hang in there.”
“You too,” I whispered.
The moment his car pulled out of the driveway, I ran to the hallway closet, grabbed my trench coat and sunglasses, and rushed out to my own vehicle, which I had deliberately parked on the street the night before so he wouldn't hear the engine start.
I waited until his taillights turned the corner past the neighborhood pharmacy, then I engaged the transmission and followed.
I kept three to four car lengths between us, using delivery vans and morning commuter traffic as a shield. For the first two miles, he drove his standard route toward the interstate that led to downtown. But just before the highway on-ramp, where the morning bottleneck usually began, Eliam turned his blinker on.
He took the exit toward the historic northern district—a sector of the city characterized by decommissioned rail yards, sprawling parks, and older institutional buildings.
My knuckles were white against the steering wheel.
He drove without urgency, stopping at red lights, signaling every turn. He wasn't trying to lose a tail because it had never occurred to him that he was being hunted. Twenty-five minutes later, he turned down an oak-lined avenue that terminated before a gated complex of mature trees and ivy-covered masonry.
A weathered stone sign near the entrance read: *Oakridge Neuro-Restorative Institute.*
I stopped my car against the curb two hundred yards back, half-hidden behind the canopy of an overgrown willow tree.
Eliam swiped an electronic security badge at the perimeter gate. The iron barrier swung open. He pulled into a reserved parking slot near the eastern wing of a three-story, red-brick Victorian building. He stepped out of his sedan, picked up his laptop bag, and walked toward the glass-and-iron doors of the side entrance with the unhurried confidence of a regular visitor.
I sat frozen, watching the building.
What was Oakridge? A clinic? A private hospital? Had he been diagnosed with something terminal? Was he sick, hiding a brain tumor or an aggressive disease to spare me the agony?
A wave of intense, overwhelming guilt washed over me. *He’s sick,* I thought, tears springing to my eyes. *He’s dying, and he didn’t want to burden me.*
I unbuckled my seatbelt, prepared to jump out of the car, run into that facility, throw my arms around his neck, and tell him we would fight whatever illness it was together.
Then the side doors of the red-brick building swung open.
Eliam stepped back out into the bright autumn sunlight. He wasn't alone.
Walking beside him was a woman.
She was dressed in a soft cream-colored cardigan and linen trousers. Her dark hair was cut into a jagged, uneven bob, and she walked with a pronounced limp, leaning gently against Eliam’s arm for support. Eliam was looking down at her with an expression of such tender, agonized protectiveness that it took the breath completely out of my lungs.
He reached up, gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind her left ear.
She turned her face toward him, smiling.
And in that split second, the sun caught the sharp angle of her jaw, the pale gray of her eyes, and the small, distinct crescent-shaped scar above her right eyebrow.
The world stopped spinning. The air evacuated my lungs. The steering wheel slipped from my sweat-slicked fingers.
The woman leaning against my husband was Sarah.
Sarah.
My younger sister.
May you like
The sister who had drowned eight years ago when her car plunged into the freezing waters of Blackwood River during a storm. The sister whose empty coffin we had buried after search-and-rescue divers failed to recover her body.
***
