When my husband told me he was heading to his childhood friend’s funeral, I didn’t question it. Grief is personal, and he’d been distant lately—quiet, withdrawn, almost hollow. I assumed it was sorrow. But sorrow doesn’t smell like gasoline.
That afternoon, something felt off. His car was still parked behind our country house, half-hidden by the trees. I followed a hunch, barefoot and breathless, until I saw him. He was crouched low, dousing something in gasoline. A tarp. A shape. My heart stuttered.
He didn’t hear me approach. I called his name, and he jolted like a man caught in a crime. His eyes—wild, cornered—met mine. “It’s not what it looks like,” he said. But the truth was already unraveling.
Under the tarp was a box of old photographs, letters, and a journal—his journal. Pages filled with confessions, rage, and secrets I wasn’t meant to read. His friend hadn’t died. There was no funeral. The man he claimed to mourn was very much alive—and had betrayed him years ago in a way that still burned.
This wasn’t grief. It was revenge. A ritual of erasure. He wanted to burn the past, to rewrite the story, to bury the truth in smoke and ash.
I stood there, stunned. The man I married had been living with ghosts, and now he was trying to silence them. But secrets don’t burn clean. They linger. They stain.
We didn’t speak much after that. He left the box untouched. I kept the journal. And every time I look at him now, I wonder: was this the first lie, or just the one I finally caught?
