A month later, Emily was discharged from the hospital. Caleb, ever the type who loved grand gestures, bought her a sprawling villa to help her heal, complete with all the luxuries one could need for a full recovery. 

To celebrate her release, he threw an extravagant party, inviting a crowd of their mutual friends. 

Some unseen force kept my ghostly form tethered to Caleb, forcing me to watch as they moved through life together, in and out of places I once thought were ours. 

At the party, the spotlight-seeking Emily clung to Caleb despite her still-fragile condition, leaning into his embrace with a coy smile, their whispered exchanges like little daggers. Her brazen display didn’t go unnoticed, and the whispers around them grew louder. 

When one of Caleb’s friends casually brought up my name, Emily’s smile stiffened for just a moment. She forced a small, self-conscious laugh, her eyes dropping. 

“Caleb, are we… doing the right thing?” she said, her tone carefully crafted to sound self-effacing. “I mean, I’m still just… no one. If Grace finds out, she’s bound to be upset.” 

Caleb’s expression darkened, his jaw tightening. “Why bring her up on a day like this? She’s bad luck.” 

With that, he boldly took Emily’s hand, raising his voice to ensure everyone in the room heard him. 

“Emily is the woman I love most in this world. I’d appreciate it if no one ever brought up irrelevant people again.” 

The room fell into a stunned silence. His words sliced through the air, cold and final, leaving no room for misinterpretation. The message was clear: I, his wife, had become a ghost long before my death. 

My eyes stung, the hollow ache of betrayal tightening around my chest. 

So this was what I’d become—a stand-in, a mere shadow of his true love. Caleb’s heart had always belonged to Emily, not me. 

We used to be childhood sweethearts, the kind that family friends would tease about ending up together. I fell in love with him at sixteen, clinging to that one offhanded confession he made as a teenager, letting it shape the next decade of my life. 

Alas, teenage love is paper-thin. When Caleb met Emily in college, all the memories we’d built together crumbled into nothing. I watched from the sidelines as they fell in love, biting back my feelings, keeping my distance like a polite stranger. 

Then, Emily suddenly left for another country, and they broke up. 

It was during one of his drunken, reckless nights that Caleb found himself cornered by thugs, and I had stepped in desperately and recklessly. I had distracted them long enough for him to escape, my own life hanging by a thread. 

Before he had passed out from blood loss, he had gripped my hand and whispered, “Grace, as long as I’m alive, I’ll always be good to you…” 

When he woke up, he kept that promise. He was gentle, attentive, the perfect boyfriend. Marriage felt like the natural next step, and for a while, we were the couple others envied. 

Just then, Emily returned, like a storm ripping through my carefully built world. She claimed her sudden departure had been due to a mysterious illness, a revelation that shattered Caleb’s resolve. 

First, he started coming home late. Then, he stopped coming home at all. When he did, his conversations always found their way back to her—Emily this, Emily that, her favorite foods, her recovery progress, her every breath. 

I thought if I endured it, if I played the patient, forgiving wife, he might eventually come back to me. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

In the end, my shattered, bleeding body lay on that operating table, and my ghost was trapped forever in this cold, indifferent world. Meanwhile, Caleb stood by her side, whispering sweet nothings into the ears of the only woman he ever truly loved.