Part 1Dead Three Years, My Wife Wants Me to Take the Blame for Her First Love

I have been dead for three years.

Today, my lawyer wife showed up at my overgrown childhood home in the countryside, clutching a printed plea deal.

She couldn't find me anywhere, so she eventually had to knock on a neighbor's door to ask for my whereabouts.

"Mike has been dead for a long time," the neighbor told her flatly. "Word is, right after he got out of prison, the victims' families tracked him down and beat him to death."

My wife refused to believe a single word. She was convinced the neighbor and I were running some kind of sick con.

She scoffed, her face twisting with absolute disgust. "He spent a couple of years behind bars, and now he's got the nerve to fake his own death to avoid me?"

"You tell him something for me. If he doesn't show up in court this Monday, his crazy mother locked up in that asylum won't see another dime of my money!"

With that, she turned on her heel and stormed off.

The neighbor watched her stubborn, retreating figure and let out a heavy sigh. "But his mother already starved to death in that ward a long time ago..."

* * *

I floated in the weed-choked yard of my old estate, watching Diana stumble awkwardly through the dead grass in her designer stilettos.

She was tightly gripping a few sheets of paper. A confession form, I figured, meant to make me take the fall one more time.

"Mike! Get out here! Do you think hiding in this dump is funny?"

She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her voice bounced off the empty, decaying walls of the farmhouse.

"If I hadn't pulled strings back then, you would have been beaten to a pulp inside! Now I actually need you, and you have the guts to hide from me?"

Listening to Diana talk about the past with zero remorse felt like an ice pick driving straight into my chest.

Three years ago, she said the exact same things.

Back then, Oliver had driven drunk and hit someone. Diana came to me with fake evidence and a cold ultimatum.

"It's just two years. You go in for two years, and I guarantee your mother gets the absolute best medical care. But if you say no..."

I remember staring at her in pure disbelief. We fought until I flipped the dining table.

"Diana! I am your husband! How could you throw me in a cell just to save him?"

She didn't even bother to explain herself. She just looked at me with a sickening amount of contempt.

"Either sign the confession, or watch your mother's treatment get cut off today. Take your pick."

And now, here she was again, wearing the exact same ugly expression.

It was late into the night, but Diana was still yelling.

The noise finally woke up Mrs. Gable next door. The older woman shoved her window open and poked her head out.

"What is all that screaming about at this hour? Nobody lives there anymore!"

Diana immediately aimed her hostility at the old woman.

"You know Mike, don't you? Is he hiding in there?"

Mrs. Gable squinted through her reading glasses for a good while before letting out a soft sound of realization.

"Oh, you mean Mike? He passed away almost three years ago."

Diana's face froze for a fraction of a second. "What did you just say? Dead?"

"That's right. He didn't even make it two days out of prison before he was killed. People say it was the family of the victims from that old case. Beat him till he stopped breathing right on the spot."

Mrs. Gable frowned, her tone turning sour. "Who exactly are you to him? How do you not know this?"

"Impossible!" Diana's voice suddenly spiked in pitch. "Someone like him wouldn't just..."

Before she could even finish her sentence, her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone. She dialed Oliver's number.

She put it on speaker. Oliver's smooth voice drifted out into the cold night air.

"Hey D, what's wrong?"

"Oliver, that fifty grand you said you gave to the victim's family. Did you actually hand it over?"

There was a half-second pause on the other end, followed by Oliver's confident reply.

"Of course I did. Handed it to them myself. Why?"

I hovered right next to the phone, so close I could hear the static, and almost let out a string of curses.

He didn't do a damn thing.

When I was released, those relatives showed up at my door, screaming about getting blood for blood.

It was only as I was being beaten within an inch of my life that I realized Oliver had never paid them a single cent. They hadn't even heard the word "settlement."

I died in Oliver's place.

Hearing his lie, the tension drained out of Diana's face.

She snapped her head back toward Mrs. Gable, glaring with pure revulsion.

"I knew it. You and Mike are just teaming up to play me!"

"So what if he had to sit in a cell for two years? Now he's playing dead to hide from me?"

"You tell him, Mrs. Gable. If he doesn't show his face in court next Monday, that crazy mother of his can rot!"

She spun around and marched away, her heels clicking sharply against the stone path with absolute finality.

Mrs. Gable watched her go, shaking her head at the empty air.

"Love really makes a fool out of people. Mike's poor mother passed on ages ago. Heard nobody even checked her room for days. Starved right to the bone."