The Wife I Buried Rang Our Doorbell

My wife, Lily Fisk, slapped me hard on the face, leaving me completely stunned. Her eyes were bloodshot as she yelled, "Justin Lowell, do you think I'm an idiot? Your mistress just showed up! I want a divorce!"

I stumbled backward before regaining my balance. I quickly shut the door, pulled Lily into our bedroom, and stammered, "I'm telling the truth! My first wife, Katy Dugan, died from ALS! I told you that, remember?"

"Are you kidding me?" Her voice was choked with tears. "How can a dead person be at our door?"

As soon as Lily finished speaking, we stared at each other. A ridiculous thought crossed both our minds.

Could it be a ghost?

I hissed in pain as Lily suddenly pinched my arm. "Stop with this ghost nonsense! I bet you couldn't get over her, so you found some woman who looked like her to put on an act just to mess with me! Justin, you're so heartless!"

"I didn't!" The vein in my forehead was throbbing. I frantically went through my phone until I found the pictures.

"Look! I have a picture to prove it!"

That was a photo we had taken after Katy had been diagnosed with ALS. She was in a wheelchair, and my arms were wrapped around her as I kissed her cheek.

The sun was shining brightly. Katy tried her best to smile, but she couldn't hide how pale and thin she had become.

I held the phone up in front of Lily. She stopped yelling at me and stared at the woman in the photo.

Aside from looking haggard, everything else was the same. Katy had the same features, expression, and even the same tiny mole at the corner of her left eye as the smiling woman outside the door.

Lily was completely taken aback. She took my hand, her voice choked with tears. "What… What on earth is going on? Justin… Is she… Is she really back?"

I mustered up the courage to open the bedroom door and peeked toward the front door. I had closed it earlier, but now it was wide open, and the woman was gone.

I pulled Lily out of the bedroom, completely bewildered. "Did we both just have a bad dream?"

Lily pinched me hard again. It really hurt.

"It must be the mushrooms!"

Lily's eyes suddenly lit up as she yelled, "We had… We had some wild mushrooms from Colpor this afternoon! Maybe we didn't cook them long enough. That's why we got poisoned and started hallucinating!"

Lily started talking faster and faster. "That must be it! We both got poisoned!"

She was right. It had to be those mushrooms! They were all weird, bright colors too.

I let out a huge sigh of relief.

Lily stumbled toward the kitchen, muttering to herself. "We have to see if there are any other mushrooms left. We need to get rid of them now…"

Lily's piercing scream suddenly rang out from the kitchen. I dashed over and saw Katy standing there in an apron, making ravioli.

Hearing the commotion, Katy turned around, a little flour dusting the tip of her nose, and smiled sweetly at us.

The way she carried herself and that expression… It was exactly the way she had been three years ago.