Chapter 3The Placeholder Husband

I woke the next morning to an empty house. Claire and Maya were gone.

I stood barefoot in the living room, looking around at the minimalist, grayscale decor. It felt less like a home and more like a showroom, devoid of warmth or life. Claire never cooked. We either ordered takeout or I ate at the office.

For the first time, I asked myself if this was the life I really wanted. All I’d ever wanted was simple: a marriage that didn’t feel like a business arrangement, a partner I could argue with and laugh with.

Claire wasn’t that person.

Just then, my phone rang. It was work. I had to fly to Paris for an urgent meeting. It was a normal part of the job; our company did a lot of international trade.

I sent Claire a text to let her know. Hours passed before a single word appeared in response: Ok.

I scrolled up through our chat history. It was a long, one-sided monologue. Me sharing funny stories from my day, asking her questions. Her replies, when they came at all, were usually a single word answering only my last question.

Once, when the silence had become too much to bear, I’d confronted her. “Why do you never text me back?”

I can still picture her, holding a glass of water, her eyes as calm and still as a frozen lake. “We live together, Ethan. We see each other every day. What is there to talk about?”

I was speechless. The truth was, she barely spoke to me at home, either. She only ever responded when my "nagging," as she called it, became too much to ignore.

I put my phone down and laughed, a hollow, bitter sound.

As I was about to leave, I realized I’d forgotten my passport. I went to the study to look for it, opening the drawer of the old desk. Tucked away in the back, I found an old iPhone, a model from five or six years ago, preserved with meticulous care.

Claire wasn’t a sentimental person; she didn’t keep old things. This was out of character. A flicker of curiosity turned into something heavier as I powered it on. The battery was full. She used this. She used it often.

A knot of dread tightened in my stomach.

I opened the phone. The contacts list had only one entry: The One I Can’t Forget.

My hand trembled as I opened the messaging app. There were thousands of texts, all sent from Claire to this number. The earliest was from before we’d even met.

Leo, are you okay? I know you’ll never get this, but I have to send it somewhere.

I got married today. He’s… a lot. He always wants things from me.

Leo, I’m pregnant. It’s funny, isn’t it? We always talked about having a baby together. Another broken promise.

There were more. So many more. The words blurred as the blood froze in my veins. I backed out of the messages, my thumb shaking. I didn’t want to see any more of how Claire had spent our marriage confiding in the ghost of her first love. To her, I was just an annoyance.

My thumb accidentally tapped on a blog app. The account was anonymous, but the profile picture was a photo of two hands, fingers intertwined. I knew, with a certainty that hollowed me out, that the other hand wasn’t mine. Claire never took photos with me. Not even a simple snapshot of us holding hands.

The blog posts were written in plain English, but they were a language I couldn’t comprehend.

It was never going to be you. So it didn’t matter who it was.

I’ve learned that true peace and true love can’t live in the same heart. With you, my heart was never peaceful.

I thank God every day that Maya looks like me. That way, when the three of us are together, there’s no shadow of anyone else.