The Ghost Wife

POV: ISLA WINTERS ROMANO (Flashback - Six Years Earlier, Age 22)

The first month of marriage taught me what loneliness really meant.

I'd thought I understood loneliness before, growing up as the daughter who didn't quite fit, the sister who wasn't quite good enough, the student who studied alone while everyone else went to parties. But that had been solitude. Aloneness by circumstance.

This was different.

This was lying next to someone in spirit, sharing a home, a name, a life and being more alone than if you'd been by yourself.

I woke up alone every morning. Jaxon was always gone by the time I opened my eyes, off on his run or already at the office or simply... elsewhere. Anywhere that wasn't here with me.

I made coffee at 6:45 AM every single day. The first morning, I'd asked what kind he liked. He'd said "black, no sugar" without looking up from his phone. So I bought expensive beans from a specialty store in Tribeca, learned to brew them perfectly, had his cup ready at exactly 7:15 when he returned from his run.

He took it without a word. Drank it while scrolling through emails. Left the empty cup on the counter.

Never said thank you.

Not once in thirty days.

I told myself it didn't matter. That small gestures of care didn't need acknowledgment. That I was being his wife even if he didn't see it.

But it mattered. It mattered so much.

By the second week, I'd established a routine that revolved entirely around a man who barely knew I existed.

6:45 AM: Make coffee 7:15 AM: Jaxon returns from run, takes coffee, ignores me 7:30 AM: He showers (in his bathroom, not the one connected to my room) 8:00 AM: He leaves for work 8:15 AM - 6:00 PM: I exist in a beautiful, empty penthouse with nothing to do

The housekeeper came three times a week. She was kind but professional, treating me like a temporary fixture rather than the lady of the house. I tried to help her clean, to feel useful, but she gently shooed me away.

"Mrs. Romano, you don't need to do that. I'm paid to handle the house."

Mrs. Romano. The name still felt foreign. Like I was wearing someone else's identity.

I'd withdrawn from school, there was no point in continuing when I was living in Manhattan now, when my husband made it clear he didn't want me pursuing anything that might interfere with being available whenever he needed... whatever it was he needed from me.

Which, as it turned out, was nothing.

After that first night, Jaxon never came to my room again. Never touched me. Never looked at me with anything resembling desire or even basic husbandly interest.

I was furniture. Decorative, functional furniture that made coffee and stayed out of the way.

I tried so hard those first few weeks.

I cooked dinner every night, even though I was a mediocre cook at best. Looked up recipes online, spent hours in the kitchen trying to make something he might like. Set the table. Waited.

The first night, he texted at 7 PM: Working late. Don't wait up.

I ate alone. Put his portion in the fridge.

The second night: Client dinner. Won't be home.

The third night: no text at all. He just didn't come home.

By the fourth night, I stopped setting his place. Stopped expecting him. Made simple meals for myself and left extras in containers he never touched.

I tried to talk to him. Would wait up sometimes, sitting in the living room with a book I wasn't really reading, hoping he'd come home at a reasonable hour.

When he did, usually around 11 PM, he'd look surprised to see me there.

"You're still up."

"I wanted to see you. We could talk, or watch something, or…"

"I have an early meeting. Goodnight, Isla."

And he'd disappear into his wing of the penthouse.

After a week of that, I stopped waiting up.

I tried asking about his day at breakfast, those brief fifteen minutes when he was physically present.

"How's work going? The project you mentioned"

"Fine."

"Is there anything I can help with? I know I studied computer science, and if you ever need…"

"I have a team for that."

"I just thought…"

"Isla." He finally looked at me, and his eyes were so cold. "I appreciate the interest, but I don't need help. And I don't have time for small talk. I have a lot of work to do."

Small talk. That's what he called my desperate attempts at connection. Small talk.

After that, I stopped trying to engage him at breakfast. Just made his coffee and stayed silent while he checked his phone.

Three weeks in, I discovered his home office.

It was the one room I hadn't entered, his private space, kept locked when he wasn't there. But one morning, he'd left in a rush and forgotten to lock it.

I stood in the doorway for a full minute, debating. This was his space. His privacy. I shouldn't invade it.

But I was so desperately lonely, so hungry for any connection to my husband, that I walked in.

The office was exactly like the rest of the penthouse, sleek, modern, expensive. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A massive desk with three monitors. Bookshelves filled with technical manuals and business books.

And on the center monitor, left open: code.

I moved closer, drawn by something I actually understood. Something from my old life, before I'd become Mrs. Romano, invisible wife.

The code was... a mess.

I don't mean to sound arrogant, but it was objectively bad. Inefficient algorithms, confusing variable names, security vulnerabilities I could spot immediately. Whatever project this was, whoever had written it didn't understand elegant architecture.

I shouldn't have cared. Should have left his office and his work alone.

But I was a computer science major who'd been sitting in an empty penthouse for three weeks with absolutely nothing to do. My brain was starving for problems to solve. And this problem was right in front of me.

Just a quick look, I told myself. Just to see what he's working on.

Two hours later, I was still there, having fallen down a rabbit hole of code that got worse the deeper I went. This was for Apex Technologies I could see that from the file names. Some kind of security system that was supposed to be revolutionary but was actually full of holes.

My fingers itched to fix it. To show him that I could be useful, that I wasn't just furniture, that maybe he'd married someone who could actually help him.

But no. That was his work. I couldn't just... change things without permission.

I closed the files and left the office exactly as I'd found it.

That night, when Jaxon came home at 11:30 PM, I was in my room reading. I heard him go into his office. Heard him curse.

"What the hell is wrong with this code?"

He spent three hours trying to fix whatever problem he'd found. I lay in my bed, listening to him work, knowing I could solve his problem in thirty minutes but having no way to tell him without admitting I'd been in his office.

At 2 AM, I heard his office door close. Heard his bedroom door close.

I waited another hour to make sure he was asleep, then crept down the hallway to his office.

The door was unlocked again, either he'd forgotten in his frustration, or he thought there was no one in the penthouse who'd bother his work.

I opened the files and got to work.

The code was even worse than I'd thought. Not just inefficient, fundamentally flawed. The architecture was wrong. The logic was backward. Whoever had designed this didn't understand the basic principles of secure system design.

But I understood them.

I'd learned from the best professors at SUNY. Had been the top student in every coding class I'd taken. Had dreamed of working at a company like Apex someday, building the kind of elegant systems that changed industries.

Instead, I'd gotten married. But my knowledge hadn't disappeared. My skills hadn't evaporated just because I was now Mrs. Romano instead of Isla Winters, computer science student.

I worked through the night, completely redesigning the security architecture. Made it cleaner, faster, more secure. Turned three hundred lines of messy code into one hundred lines of elegant solution.

It was beautiful. Perfect. The kind of work I was proud of.

By 5 AM, I was done. I saved everything, making sure to preserve the file structure so it looked like he'd made the changes. Closed everything exactly as he'd left it.

Crept back to my room just as the sun was starting to rise.

I slept for two hours, woke up at 7:30, and made his coffee.

When Jaxon came back from his run at 7:45, I was in the kitchen as usual, waiting with his perfectly brewed coffee.

He took it. Drank it. Said nothing.

Then he went to his office.

I waited, heart pounding. Would he notice? Would he realize someone had fixed his code? Would he figure out it was me?

Ten minutes later, I heard him on the phone.

"Yeah, I figured it out. The whole architecture was wrong, so I rebuilt it from scratch. Should work perfectly now." A pause. "No, I was up all night on it. Just finished at five." Another pause. "Thanks. I'll send it over."

He thought he'd done it. Thought he'd spent all night fixing the code, when really he'd gone to bed frustrated and I'd solved his problem while he slept.

I should have been angry. Should have felt used.

Instead, I felt... useful. Valued, in a way. Even if he didn't know it was me, I'd helped him. I'd been his partner, even secretly.

Maybe this could be enough. Maybe if I kept helping from the shadows, kept making his life easier in ways he never knew about, eventually he'd notice. Eventually he'd see me.

I was so naive.

That became my routine. My secret.

During the day, I'd wait until the housekeeper left, then sneak into his office and review whatever he was working on. I never changed anything while he was home, that felt too risky. But I'd identify problems, think through solutions, wait until the middle of the night when he was asleep.

Then I'd creep down the hallway like a ghost in my own home and fix his mistakes.

I rebuilt his entire code architecture over three weeks. Made Apex Technologies' platform revolutionary without anyone knowing. Turned his mediocre project into something genuinely brilliant.

And every morning, he'd call his team and talk about the breakthrough he'd had the night before. The solution he'd figured out. The innovation he'd created.

Never once did he wonder how he was suddenly solving problems that had stumped him for months. Never once did he question his sudden genius.

I told myself I didn't mind. That helping him was enough. That being needed, even if he didn't know he needed me was better than being invisible.

But late at night, after I'd finished fixing his code and crept back to my empty room, I'd lie awake and wonder: how long could I do this? How long could I be a ghost in my own marriage, contributing everything and receiving nothing?

How long before I realized that you can't make someone love you by being perfect and invisible? That you can't earn affection by sacrificing your identity?

That some people are so broken, so closed off, that no amount of love or service or desperate hope will reach them?

Week four of my marriage, I made dinner again. Something special. I'd found a recipe for his favorite meal, he'd mentioned it once, offhandedly, in a phone call I'd overheard. Osso buco. I'd never made it before, but I spent all afternoon on it, determined to get it right.

Set the table with candles. Wore a nice dress instead of my usual jeans and sweater. Put on makeup.

Texted him at 5 PM: I made dinner. Will you be home?

6 PM: no response.

7 PM: no response.

8 PM: I texted again. Jaxon? Are you coming home?

9 PM: Finally, a reply. Working late. Don't wait up.

I sat at that carefully set table until 10 PM, watching the candles burn down, watching the food get cold, watching my hope drain away like wax pooling under the flames.

At 10:30, I threw the food away. Blew out the candles. Washed the dishes. Went to my room.

At 2 AM, I heard him come home. Heard him go straight to his room without even checking if I was awake.

I lay in the darkness and finally admitted what I'd been trying to deny: this wasn't going to get better. Jaxon wasn't going to suddenly notice me, appreciate me, love me. I could be the perfect wife, the perfect ghost, the perfect invisible helper, and it would never be enough.

Because he didn't want a wife. He wanted an absence. A legal piece of paper that satisfied his father's requirements without interfering with his real life.

And I was giving him exactly that, even as it killed me.

I cried that night. Quietly, so he wouldn't hear through the walls. Cried for the girl who'd believed she could make this work. Cried for the hope I'd been clinging to. Cried for the marriage that existed on paper but nowhere else.

But in the morning, I woke up at 6:45. Made his coffee. Had it ready at 7:15.

He took it without a word.

And I told myself: tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow he'll see me. Tomorrow I'll try harder.

Tomorrow never came.

But for three more months, I kept trying. Kept hoping. Kept being his ghost wife who loved him desperately while he barely remembered she existed.

Until the day everything changed.

Until the day I got pregnant, and that small flutter of hope came back, stronger than ever, more dangerous than before.

The hope that maybe, just maybe, a baby would make him love me