But not everything was as it seemed. From day one, the maid, Valerie, gave me a look that screamed, “You don’t belong here.” I tried to shake it off; I was here to stay. Valerie was going to have to deal with that. A few days into settling in, I decided to make breakfast for my new family. The house was huge, and George’s younger brother and sister still lived at home, so I prepared for a large spread. Valerie stood in the kitchen with me, eyeing every move I made, while she wiped the countertops. She made me nervous. When I reached across the table to look for my phone — to look up different ways of making eggs — it wasn’t there, My heart pounding, I made my way to our bedroom, the warning playing on repeat in my head. In my absence, Valerie had made the bed and folded the clothes we had discarded on the floor the night before.
I hesitated before opening the drawer, a sense of dread washing over me. I didn’t know what would happen the moment I opened it. I didn’t know what secrets George had, waiting for me to find. Inside, I found a stack of letters tied with a faded ribbon and an old key. The letters, written by my husband, were to someone named Elena. I sat on our bed and read through them all — each letter spoke of a love and future that George had promised another person. Have you seen my phone?” I asked Valerie, certain it had been on the table in front of her. Valerie shook her head, barely glancing my way. “I’d hurry up with the breakfast if I were you,” she said coldly. “The family expects it on the table before they come downstairs.” I took her advice and finished the breakfast, while Valerie left the kitchen. I eventually found my phone, left on the seat Valerie had just vacated. But it was the message on the screen that turned my world upside down: Check your husband’s drawer. The top left one, specifically. With each word, my heart broke a little more. The last letter was a goodbye; according to the date, it was just before George proposed to me — three days before, to be precise. And the key? “Do you know what this key is for?” I asked Ivy, George’s younger sister, when I found it didn’t fit anything in our room. “Oh, I think it’s for the attic,” she said, inspecting the key. “It has to be; that was George’s favorite room. I don’t know why; it’s always been so dark and drafty to me. I haven’t been there in years.” I found my way to the attic, and it was just as dark and drafty as Ivy had said. But once I turned on the light, my blood ran cold. The walls of the room were covered in photographs of my husband and a woman — Elena, I assumed. In each photograph, their love was clear, bouncing off the paper. It mocked me.