But he’d already left, leaving me alone in our kitchen, tears in my eyes and a rising knot of doubt in my stomach.
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I’d only met his aunt twice: briefly at our wedding and once at a family cookout. She’d been perfectly pleasant and welcoming. When did she conclude she did not like me? And why hadn’t Jeremy addressed this before?
So, this month, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. Jeremy had been distant for weeks, distracted throughout our discussions, and jumping whenever his phone rang. The man who used to tell me everything about his day now appeared to be living in a world I didn’t understand.
Three days before his next scheduled disappearance, I made a decision from which there would be no return. I purchased a small GPS tracker online and carefully installed it beneath Jeremy’s car while he was at work.
My hands shook as I held the small device, feeling like a spy in my own marriage.
But I needed to know. The woman who had always believed blindly required explanations.
Saturday morning was dark and drizzly. Jeremy scarcely touched his coffee, his leg jumping nervously beneath the table.
“I’ll probably be gone longer than usual today,” he said without meeting my eyes. “Aunt Lina has some big garden project she needs help with.”
“Okay, honey. Drive safe.”
I watched from our bedroom window as he backed out of the driveway, then grabbed my phone to follow his location.
For 30 anxious minutes, I watched the little dot move away from Ashville, our peaceful suburb, and toward the boundaries of Cliffside County.
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When the dot stopped moving, I grabbed my keys.
The address directed me to a neighborhood I’d never seen before, full of run-down houses with peeling paint and overgrown yards… the kind of place that felt forgotten by time. A cold, continuous rain soaked the streets, as if the sky itself lamented this location.
Jeremy’s car sat in front of a dilapidated two-story house with damaged shutters and a porch that sagged from neglect.
The engine was turned off, yet the stillness raged. I stared at the house, each second dragging on my nerves like the scratch of a dull knife. Every instinct told me to turn around, drive home, and pretend I never followed him here.
But I could not. Not anymore.
As I neared the front door, the fall wind blasted through the naked trees, their branches extending like skeletal fingers into the dark sky. Dead leaves crunched beneath my feet, and in the distance, a dog howled mournfully.
As I approached the creaking porch steps, the house appeared to be watching me through its dark, vacant windows. I raised my shaky fingers and knocked.
Footsteps approached from inside, and I held my breath. The door opened to reveal a woman in her sixties with warm eyes and graying hair tucked back in a loose bun. She wore an old cardigan and smiled at me with genuine warmth.
“Hello, dear. Are you here for the group?”
“I… yes,” I lied, not understanding what she meant.
“Come in, come in. We’re just getting started.”
She ushered me into a living room that had been transformed into something resembling a community center. Folding chairs were arranged in a circle, soft instrumental music playing from a small speaker, and on the wall was a hand-painted sign that made my blood run cold:
“Grief Counseling: For Those Who Lost a Spouse”
And in the center of the circle stood my husband.
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Jeremy held a framed portrait to his chest, his shoulders quivering with what appeared to be genuine weeping.
I couldn’t see the picture clearly from my frozen position in the doorway, but I could hear every word he said.
“It’s been three years since I lost Hannah,” he said, his voice breaking in a way I’d never heard before. “Three years since cancer took the love of my life away from me. Some days I still reach for her side of the bed… still expect to see her smile when I walk through the door.”
Quiet condolences drifted over me like smoke.
I stayed motionless as tears streamed down my cheeks… not from grief, but from sheer, paralyzing wonder at what I had seen.
Who was Hannah? Jeremy had never married before me. He had informed me that I was his first meaningful relationship, love, and everything that mattered.
“She would’ve been 32 next month,” he continued, holding the photograph higher. “We were planning to start a family. She picked out names for our future children… and dreamed about the house we’d buy with a big backyard for them to play in.”
The woman who had let me in put a soft hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay, honey?” “You look pale.”
That’s when Jeremy’s gaze met mine across the room. As the color drained from his face, the image slid from his hands and clattered to the floor. For a minute, we just stared at each other, me in shock and him in apparent dread.
“I… I need to step outside for a moment,” he mumbled to the group, quickly moving toward me.
“Of course, take all the time you need,” the facilitator said softly.
Jeremy grabbed my arm and pulled me out the front door, his grip tight enough to leave marks.
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“Clover?? What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered harshly once we were alone on the porch.
I wrenched my arm free, tears running down my cheeks. “I came to make things right with your aunt, but that was obviously stupid because she doesn’t even live here, does she?” What’s happening, Jeremy? “Who is Hannah?”
He ran his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth like a trapped beast.
“Clover, I can explain—”
“Explain what?” That you have li:ed to me throughout our marriage? Did you have a wife named Hannah who di:ed of canc3r? “When exactly were you going to mention her?”
“She’s not real!” He shouted, then quickly lowered his voice and looked fearfully at the house. “Hannah’s not real, okay? “I made her up.”
I stared at him, feeling as if the ground beneath me was changing.
“You made her up?”
Jeremy’s face wrinkled. “I have always wanted to be an actress, Clover. It has been my dream since I was a child. But my parents forced me to attend business school, saying that acting was a waste of time and that I would never make it. So now… I come to organizations like this to practice genuine feelings.”
“Practice?”
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“Various characters and backgrounds. Sometimes I’m a widower, like today. Last month, I went to an addiction rehabilitation meeting and pretended to be an ex-alcoholic. There is a cancer support group downtown where I play a man with six months to live.”
I felt nauseated. “Jeremy, these people are really suffering. They are experiencing genuine loss and pain, and you are treating it as a game?”
“It’s not a game!” he emphasized. “It is allowing me to acquire confidence and enhance my craft. I intend to audition for professional parts shortly. “I just need more practice first.”
I turned and headed to my car, unwilling to look at him any longer.
“Clover, wait!”
But I just couldn’t wait. Rain soaked through my clothes as I limped to the car, not feeling the cold but more the weight of what I now understood. I drove home in a trance, each raindrop tapping like uncertainty against the windshield.
That evening, Jeremy returned home with his regular grocery bag plus a box of pastries from our favorite bakery. He placed them on the kitchen counter and stood there waiting.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” he finally said.
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“Don’t tell anyone that my husband is a pathological liar who manipulates grieving people for his own benefit?”
“It’s not like that—”
“Then what is it like, Jeremy? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve built our entire marriage on lies. If you can lie about this, if you can look those people in the eye and fake their pain, what else have you lied about?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I held up my hand.
“I need time to think.”
That was three weeks ago. Jeremy’s been sleeping in the guest room, tiptoeing around me like I’m a bomb that might explode. He keeps trying to begin conversations and explain himself. But I can’t listen anymore.
I believe that trust is more than merely broken. It’s smashed like glass on concrete, splintered into so many pieces that even if you attempted to reassemble them, you’d never have the same lovely item you started with.
