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We had already been planning to get married.
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Underneath the photographs, I discovered an old phone.
I charged it.
Then I searched through the messages.
One name stopped me.
Megan.
The same name crossed out in my notebook.
I called the number.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Megan? It’s Claire.”
Silence.
Then—
“Claire? Oh my God.”
Her voice cracked.
“I never thought you’d call me again.”
“I don’t remember what happened between us.”
I swallowed.
“But I need you to tell me.”
Her first question frightened me.
“Does Richard know you’re calling?”
“No.”
Megan took a breath.
“A few days before your accident, Richard and I got drunk at a party.”
She stopped.
“It happened once.”
I closed my eyes.
“You slept with him?”
“Yes.”
Her voice broke.
“We were supposed to tell you together. Neither of us did.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“The night of your accident, you found the messages.”
Until that moment, I had always believed the accident was the night my old life ended.
Now I realized it was the night Richard’s lie began.
“What happened after that?”
“You called me screaming.”
Megan started crying.
“You got in your car. I begged you not to drive.”
I closed my eyes.
For one second, there was nothing.
Then—
Rain.
Water pounding against a windshield.
Headlights in my rearview mirror.
A horn blaring behind me.
Richard’s car. My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Metal.
Pain.
Something pulling violently against my throat.
My eyes snapped open.
My mother’s necklace was still in my hand.
“Richard was there.”
“What?”
“He followed me.”
“I know,” Megan whispered. “He told the police he was trying to get you to pull over.”
I stared at the broken clasp.
That was enough.
I still couldn’t remember the entire argument.
Maybe I never would.
But Richard knew exactly what had happened that night.
And for two years, he had let me build a new life around not knowing.
When Richard came home that evening, I was waiting at the kitchen table.
The photographs.
My old phone.
The necklace.
Everything was laid out in front of me.
He stopped in the doorway.
Then his eyes fell on the engagement picture.
“Claire.”
“You didn’t meet me in the hospital.”
