Chapter 4

The second Julian walked into her room, Alice threw herself into his arms. "Julian, what took you so long?"

He held her and soothed her softly. "Traffic was terrible. Are you okay? Are you still in pain? Has the doctor seen you yet?"

"I'm fine now. The doctor just came by. I feel much better." Alice looked at the heavy shadows under his eyes and said sweetly, "Are you still thinking about that case? Take your time. Don't wear yourself out."

Julian said he was fine, but he couldn't stop thinking about that scar.

He held Alice close, but his mind kept returning to the scar he'd seen in the morgue, stretching from the left ribs to the lower abdomen.

It looked so much like Clara's scar.

He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came.

Clara was still sulking over Alice. That couldn't possibly be her body. He was just too busy to think straight.

Alice noticed something was off and looked up at him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Julian let go of her, turned away, pulled out his phone, and called my number.

All he got was a cold recorded voice. "The number you have dialed is unavailable."

He couldn't believe it. He called again. The phone was still off.

Standing outside Alice's room, Julian sent me a text. "Clara, enough is enough. Call me back."

A moment later, he sent another. "I know you're not heartless. Just come home. Alice's condition is getting worse, and she needs your help."

A few minutes passed. No reply. His thumb hovered over the screen. Then he gripped his phone, a sudden sense of dread settling over him.

I stood behind him and watched him dial, over and over, a number no one would ever answer again.

The next day, Mike Dawson, one of Julian's coworkers, stopped him as he arrived at work. "Julian, I heard your wife's been gone for days. Aren't you worried? What if something's happened to her?"

"She's fine," Julian snapped. "She's just trying to make me come crawling back. I've already texted her. She's the one ignoring me."

By "texted her," he meant the message asking why I was so selfish, why I wouldn't save Alice.

But Julian, I'm already dead... I thought bitterly as I looked at him.

Mike pressed on. "Clara's not the type to pull something like this. It's been days, Julian. Swallow your pride and go find her."

Julian scoffed. "Alice's fighting for her life in the hospital, and Clara thinks this is the time to play hide-and-seek? I'm not giving in to her little games!"

He had no idea that the woman he was cursing was lying on that cold autopsy table right then.

The same photo. The same scar. And he wouldn't even let himself think that body might be his wife.

Julian went back to his office and looked at the thermos on his desk.

It held the herbal tea I'd made him the day before I disappeared. He had stomach trouble, so for years I'd made sure he ate and drank things that wouldn't upset it.

Julian stared at it, his brow creased with worry.

Five days had gone by. I hadn't answered a single message, and no one ever picked up my phone.

For the first time, a possibility he'd refused to consider crept into Julian's mind. What if something really happened to Clara?

He pulled out his phone and opened our chat. His thumb hovered over the keyboard. He typed "Where are you," then deleted it one letter at a time.

That night, he went home. There was still no sign of me.

Julian sat on the couch, restless. When his stomach began to ache, he went looking for his medication.

He went through every cabinet in the house, and then, in my drawer, he found a stack of sticky notes and a bottle of stomach medicine.

On one of the notes, I'd written, "Don't forget to eat regularly."

Julian froze. He stared at the note, his expression unreadable. Then something at the back of the drawer caught his eye: a crumpled medical report.

Late-stage stomach cancer. And there, in the name field, was my name: Clara.

The date was the day before he'd come to me and asked me to donate bone marrow to Alice.

Julian's fingers clenched. He stared at those words and couldn't breathe for a long moment.

He sat there, stunned. Finally he forced out, "That's impossible." He read the report again and again, checking the name, checking the date, stubbornly hunting for a mistake.

But there wasn't one. The diagnosis was real. Clara hadn't lied. She really had been dying.

He was still clutching the report, struggling to breathe, when the phone on the table shrilled. The lab tech's voice on the other end was shaking.

"Julian, the DNA results and scar comparison are in. We've identified the Jane Doe!"