We had just moved into our new home, and I felt like everything was finally falling into place.
It was time to start thinking about having kids.
But just a few weeks in, my husband introduced me to the sweet old lady next door who, he said, needed a “man’s help.”
She looked like your average 80-year-old-smiling, harmless-but her eyes held something… off.
Something I couldn’t explain-but it made my skin crawl.
Soon, he was over there constantly: fixing pipes, fences, windows… It started feeling like he spent more time at her place than he did with me.
One day, I snapped, grabbed my son’s binoculars, and watched from afar as he went to “plant flowers” for her. But my jaw dropped when I saw him kiss her hand.
Not in a neighborly, polite way. No. He lifted it slowly, held it to his lips, and closed his eyes like he was savoring a memory. She leaned in, her expression soft—intimate.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Was this real? My husband—the man I was planning a future, a family with—was out there caressing the hand of an eighty-year-old woman like she was the love of his life?
I blinked hard, adjusted the binoculars, hoping I’d misread something—anything.
But then, he said something. I couldn’t hear it, of course, but I could read his lips:
“I missed you.”
The old woman reached up and touched his cheek. And that’s when I saw it.
The locket.
It slipped out from under her blouse—a silver heart-shaped locket that looked exactly like the one I found in our attic last week, buried beneath a loose floorboard. Inside it had been a photo: a young man who looked exactly like my husband, standing beside that very same woman—only, much younger.
I had thought it was coincidence. A family member, maybe. Some old relative he never talked about.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I stumbled back from the window, heart racing. Questions hit me like cold rain.
Why hadn’t he told me about her?
Why did she have photos of him from decades ago—before he was even born?
And most importantly… who the hell did I marry?