Fear Creeps In
Nights without him beside me became unbearable. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, asking questions that had no answers. Had he grown tired of me? Was there another woman?
The doubts gnawed at me like termites eating away at the foundation of a house. I lost my appetite, lost sleep, and even began to lose myself in endless suspicion.
Finally, one night when he was away, I did something desperate. I hired a worker to drill a tiny hole into the corner of his bedroom wall. Just large enough for my eye.
The following evening, heart pounding in my chest, I knelt down, pressed my face to that hole, and looked inside.
What I saw nearly shattered me.
A Truth Stranger Than Betrayal
I had prepared myself to see another woman. To confirm the betrayal I had feared. But the scene before me was far different.
My husband was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by candles and incense. His face was swollen with tears, his hands trembling as he clutched an old photograph. He whispered a name through sobs so raw it made my own chest ache.
And then I saw the face in the picture.
It wasn’t a stranger. It wasn’t an affair. It was his late wife — the woman he had lost to death five years before we ever met.
In that moment, everything became clear. His request to sleep apart was not rejection of me. It was a return to her. To a memory he could not release.
The Silent Rival
I sank to the floor, tears streaming down my cheeks. For so long, I had imagined another woman’s arms stealing him away. But my true rival was not flesh and blood — it was memory itself.
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