In the third year after my death, my wife, a lawyer named Serena Collier, wants me to take the blame and go to prison for her first love, Declan Merritt, once again.

She arrives at my hometown carrying a confession statement she prepared, only to discover the place has long since fallen into ruin.

Feeling panicked, she has no choice but to ask the neighbors where I am.

My neighbor says, "You're asking about Fletcher Whitmore? He's been dead for a long time! I hear that a victim's family hunted him down for revenge and beat him to death after he got out of prison."

Serena refuses to believe it. She thinks that my neighbor is in cahoots with me to deceive her.

With a disgusted expression, she lets out a cold snort.

She sneers, "All I did was put him behind bars for a few years. Now, he even dares to lie to me!

"Tell him this for me—if he doesn't show up in court that day, he can forget about me giving another cent to his mother in the mental hospital!"

After saying that, she storms off angrily.

Watching her stubborn figure disappear into the distance, my neighbor sighs heavily.

"But his mother already starved to death in that mental hospital a long time ago…"

I drifted through the courtyard of my old family home, watching Serena Collier totter through the overgrown weeds in her high heels. She clutched a few sheets of paper in one hand, probably the confession she wanted me to sign so I could take the fall for someone else again.

"Fletcher Whitmore! Get out here! What's the point of hiding in a dump like this?"

Her voice ricocheted off the empty walls of the courtyard.

"If it weren't for me pulling strings back then, you would've been beaten to death in there! Now I need something from you, and you have the nerve to hide from me?"

I listened to her talk about what happened all those years ago without a shred of guilt, and every word felt like an ice pick through my chest. Three years ago, she'd said the exact same kind of thing.

Back then, Declan Merritt had hit someone while driving drunk. Serena showed up at my door with forged documents and laid her plan out plain.

"Two years. You do two years inside, and I'll make sure your mother gets the best treatment money can buy. But if you say no..."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I argued with her until I flipped the table.

"Serena! I'm your husband! You're really going to send me to prison to protect him?"

She didn't even bother explaining herself. She just looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

"Sign the confession, or your mother loses her treatment. Your choice."

And now, barely any time later, here she was again with that same look on her face.

It was the middle of the night, but Serena's shouting showed no sign of stopping. My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wallace, cracked open her window and stuck her head out.

"What's all this racket? Nobody's lived in this house for years!"

Serena turned on her immediately. "You know Fletcher Whitmore, don't you? Is he hiding somewhere?"

Mrs. Wallace squinted at her through thick glasses for a long moment, then let out a slow sound of recognition. "Fletcher? He's been dead nearly three years now."

Serena's face went rigid. "What did you say? Dead?"

"That's right. It wasn't even two days after he got out of prison when someone beat him to death. I heard it had something to do with the victim's family from that case. He died right there on the spot."

She gave Serena a hard look. "And who are you to him, anyway? How could you not know that?"

"That's impossible!" Serena's voice went shrill.

"There's no way someone like him could just—"

She trailed off and yanked out her phone, her fingers trembling as she dialed Declan's number. She put it on speakerphone, and his voice floated out.

"Hey Sere, what's going on?"

"Declan, that 500 thousand dollars you said you gave to the victim's family back then, did you actually give it to them?"

There was half a second of silence on the other end before Declan's voice came back, steady and sure. "Of course, I did. I handed it over myself. Why?"

I was right there listening, and I nearly lost it. He hadn't done a damn thing.

When I got out of prison, the family came straight for me, swearing they'd avenge the victim. I was beaten within an inch of my life before I finally understood. Declan had never given them a single cent.

They hadn't even heard of any so-called "compensation." So, in the end, I died for Declan.

After she hung up, Serena's expression relaxed almost instantly. She turned and glared at Mrs. Wallace with pure contempt.

"I knew it. Fletcher put you up to this to trick me. So, he did two years in prison, and now he's learned how to fake his own death and disappear?

"You tell him that if he doesn't show up in court on Monday, his crazy mother can starve for all I care!"

She spun on her heel and walked away. Her heels struck the stone path with a sharp, final rhythm.

Mrs. Wallace watched her go, then sighed into the empty air. "That young lady's lost her mind. Fletcher's mother passed away a long time ago, not long after he did.

"I heard she wasted away in that hospital they put her in. Nobody even came to check on her."

Serena practically fled the house in her heels, so she never heard Mrs. Wallace's final words. My spirit trailed after her like it was tethered to an invisible string, unable to do anything but follow.

The taxi tore through the streets and finally pulled up beneath Declan's riverfront apartment building. The moment Serena walked through the door, Declan was right there waiting, an eager smile plastered across his face.

"Sere, how'd it go? Did Fletcher agree?"

Serena paused mid-step as she was changing her shoes, avoiding his eyes. "He wasn't home."

The smile slid off Declan's face, quickly replaced by a wounded expression. "Is Fletcher still holding a grudge? About me asking him to take the fall? I know that was a lot to put on him."

He dropped his head, and his voice went quiet, his eyes slowly reddening at the rims. "Maybe we should just forget the whole thing. It was my fault in the first place. I can't drag him into this again.

"It's just that if I really do end up behind bars, I don't know what you'd do on your own..."

Serena couldn't stand seeing him like that. She pulled him into her arms with a frown and held him close.

"Stop that. He has no right to be upset. I gave him a huge payout to keep quiet last time, and the victim's family was taken care of.

"All he had to do was sit in a cell for a couple of years. It's not like anyone asked him to die. So, what's the problem?"

She gripped his shoulders, and her voice went dead serious. "Don't worry. I'll find him. And this time, he's going to handle it for you whether he likes it or not."

I hovered near the living room ceiling, and I caught the flash of triumph that crossed Declan's lips for just a split second. My entire soul went cold.

I never saw a single cent of that money. And those "family members" she claimed had been taken care of ended up being the ones who killed me.

Declan buried his face in the crook of Serena's neck. From the angle she couldn't see, his mouth curved into a smug little smile. I reached out to wrap my hands around his throat, but my fingers passed straight through him.

"Don't worry," Serena murmured, stroking his back. "I'll track him down. He's going to see this through to the end."

She wasted no time. The very next morning, Serena drove back to the courtyard of my old house.

Sunlight filtered through the cracked window frames into the abandoned rooms. Serena stood in the yard, her frown deepening with every passing second.

"These flowers..."

She crouched down and brushed her fingers over the withered rose bushes. She knew how much I loved tending to plants, and that I'd never let them wilt like this unless something was truly wrong.

I followed behind her as she pulled out her phone and snapped photos of the cobweb-covered windowsills. Her thumb hovered over the screen for a long time before she finally dialed her assistant, Kieran Pratt.

"Look into Fletcher Whitmore's whereabouts. I want every detail you can find."

After she hung up, she kept walking deeper into the house. My heart started pounding.

Just around the corner, there was still a dried pool of blood stained into the concrete slab from three years ago. Two more steps and she'd see it.

Then a shrill ringtone cut through the silence. It was Declan's custom tone.

His voice came through the phone in a panic. "Sere! I just heard that the victim's side has gotten hold of new evidence. If we don't deal with this fast, we're done for!"

"What?" The color drained from Serena's face.

"I'm coming back right now!"

She turned and ran, not sparing another thought for anything else in the house.

I let out a bitter laugh. Some things never changed. No matter what, Declan always came first.

I was dragged along behind Serena's car as it tore through the streets, the scenery outside the windows blurring into nothing. She kept tapping the steering wheel, muttering under her breath.

"There's still time. There has to be..."

The car's speakerphone clicked on, and Kieran's voice filled the cabin. "Ms. Collier, we still haven't found any trace of Mr. Whitmore. It really looks like he might be—"

"Useless!" Serena slammed her palm against the steering wheel.

"Keep looking! Pull every security camera in the city if you have to!"

After she hung up, her breathing grew faster and more ragged. Then her eyes lit up with that look I knew all too well, the one she got when she thought she had the winning hand.

She dialed Declan's number so fast her fingers nearly slipped, her voice trembling with excitement. "Declan, I just figured it out! That old woman is still in the psychiatric ward. She's the one person Fletcher cares about more than anything."

Something deep inside me lurched. The image of my mother's frail, wasted body flashed before my eyes. After all these years, Serena still wanted to use my mother as leverage against me.

I screamed at her to stop, but she couldn't hear me. She was too caught up in the thrill of closing in on her lead, and she floored the gas pedal toward the hospital.

Serena's heels clicked sharply against the stained concrete floor. The hallway stank of disinfectant and urine, the two smells mixing into something sharp and nauseating. She pressed her hand over her nose and mouth and called out.

"Someone get over here! Where's Fletcher Whitmore's mother? Bring her out to see me!"

A middle-aged man in wire-rimmed glasses came hurrying down the corridor. "Ms. Collier, what brings you all the way—"

"Save it!" Serena cut him off. "Which room is Fletcher's mother in? I'm taking her with me."

Dr. James Langford's expression froze. A thin sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead. "Well, you see, you may not have heard, but Mrs. Whitmore Senior—"

"She what? Declan paid a hundred thousand in medical fees just last month! Take me to her right now!"

The thought made me sick. That hundred thousand had probably gone straight into Declan and Dr. Langford's pockets.

Dr. Langford fumbled with his computer, pulling up the records with shaking hands. The death certificate on the screen was impossible to miss.

"Date of death: March 15th, 2023. Cause: Severe malnutrition."

"M-Ms. Collier, Mrs. Whitmore Senior died two years ago."

"Bullshit!"

Serena snatched the mouse from him and stared at the screen. Her eyes went wide, and I could see her hands starting to tremble.

But a second later, she let out a cold, humorless laugh. "Very clever, Dr. Langford. How much did Fletcher pay you to fake these records?"

She leaned in close and dropped her voice to barely above a whisper. "Do you have any idea how many years you'd get for forging medical documents?"

Dr. Langford's knees nearly buckled. "Ms. Collier, I swear this was auto-generated by the system! You can look up the death certificate number yourself. It's all on file."

"Shut up!" Serena slammed the laptop shut and headed straight for the door.

"I'll get to the bottom of this myself. And if I find out you people have been conspiring against me..."

She didn't finish the sentence, but Dr. Langford already looked like he'd seen a ghost. I knew exactly what he was afraid of. He was the one who had injected my mother with an overdose of sedatives all those years ago.

When Serena started the car again, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the wheel. She called Declan, but her voice came out impossibly soft.

"Sweetheart, don't worry. I'll find that old woman. Fletcher always did whatever she told him to."

I hovered in the passenger seat, watching the tenderness in her eyes as she spoke to him, and hatred surged through every part of me like a rising tide.

If the dead could cry, I would have.