In the August of 2021, my husband wrote me a short note, left it on our kitchen table next to his ring, and vanished off the face of the earth. The note said that he couldn’t stand who I’d become - who we had become together. The media circus that followed was one of the most difficult of my life. I was harassed by the press, the police, and strangers who saw me in public. I was fired from my job and most of my family went no contact.
The only way out is through. I repeated this to myself over and over. I knew I didn’t kill him. I knew I didn’t drive him to kill himself. I clung to facts, the only reassurance I could find as the life I’d built collapsed. The woman I had been was dead and buried. I changed my name, I moved somewhere that had no memories living in it, I reenrolled in college at 34. I proved to myself every day that I, myself, was not dead, but simply someone else. And it worked, it really did. I made friends. I started a book club. I went on a date or two and didn’t bring up my husband. They didn’t even ask.
Between classes, a part-time job, a social life, and a club to run, I distracted myself so thoroughly that I didn’t even notice when our 8th wedding anniversary would’ve been. The pang of guilt I felt when I realized I’d missed it was a shock. I had a brief moment where I forgot that I was someone new. A moment where I wondered why Roger hadn’t said anything about it, what I should get him as an apology. When I noticed those thoughts, I buried them too, just like I had my old self. Those were her thoughts, they didn’t belong to me anymore.
With all the welcome distractions, it took a long time before I had a day that wasn’t interrupted by school or friends or work. I knew it would have to come eventually, but I dreaded the thought of being truly alone with myself. An intrusive thought told me that what drove my husband away had been exactly that - being alone with me. I put the thought aside and wrote an excessively long to-do list so that I wouldn’t have even a single moment to think about where or who I was.
The first and most obvious item on the agenda was unpacking. Cardboard boxes were strewn about the living room of my sparsely decorated studio apartment, as I hadn’t had a chance to unpack. I remembered the drive in the U-Haul from my old home, remembered being halfway through the trip when the tears overtook me and I couldn’t drive anymore. I had pulled over to the side of the road and very nearly made up my mind to burn the whole car in a fit of rage. I had pictured myself neatly sorting those thoughts into boxes as well, and I put them in the farthest depths of my mind. I had started the car again, no longer crying. I had made up headlines on the drive home about the crazed widow burning all evidence of her husband’s very existence.
I interrupted my own train of thought to put it back to the task at hand. Just unpacking boxes. Treasured memories of a woman who had died and her husband who probably had too. No big deal. I opened box after box, putting away silverware and reminding myself not to smash the personalized plate from our wedding on the lawn. Hanging family photos and making myself take a good goddamned look at his happy, easygoing smile so that I couldn’t make myself cut it from the photo. Or worse yet, leave him untouched and cut the true problem from it - me.
By the time I’d gotten to the electronics I was sick and tired of opening boxes and made a silent vow that this would be my last one of the day before I went grocery shopping. The laptop he used for work sat at the top, sleek and new. I remember that, because mine was so old that I’d thought about buying a new one. It seemed silly when I technically had one in perfect condition, just with a few memories attached. Not my memories. Not my laptop.
I opened it and saw a generic loading screen of a hill. It said, “Welcome, ROGER”. I knew it would do that and didn’t react. The password was trickier, but I knew most of his. It took me a minute to guess it, thankfully without locking myself out. I cringed as I typed in SlowPoke17 - an inside joke we’d shared, one he’d cherished enough to make it his password. Once I got in, his laptop was a perfect time capsule of the moments before he left. He’d even uploaded the pictures we took on the day before he disappeared. Everything was in pristine condition.
His Facebook notifications popped up at the bottom of the screen in order and nearly made me puke. A tag in a status that listed him as missing. Friends commenting well wishes on his pictures. A tag in an article that presumed him dead. Pictures from his candlelight vigil. Takedown pieces on me, the presumed killer that someone must’ve tagged him in. I found myself no longer being upset at reliving his journey, but now waiting in horrified silence as the notifications slowed and I watched in real-time as his loved ones forgot. They posted on his birthday, or the sporadic “wish you were here” but as it caught up, the notifications stopped. I did not allow myself to feel it like a second death, did not let a social media app hold power over him that way. He was remembered. He didn’t need people publicly proclaiming their love for him to know that.
I nearly shut the laptop. I was so close to ending it there. But as the last of the notifications popped up, a new one took its’ place. iMessage from Slow Poke. “Be home in 20. Love Love Love.” Was it…reading old messages of ours? It had to have been. I was Slow Poke and he was Fast Jab. Love Love Love had been our way of saying we loved each other. But why would the texts appear now? Before the message could disappear, I clicked it.
There weren’t a lot of texts. Maybe 40 in total. They weren’t connected to any phone number, just to his email. They were all sent after his disappearance. Listing facts helped, made me rationalize and comprehend that they couldn’t have been real. Unless he’d been reusing nicknames. But then, early on he said something that made me know it couldn’t be true. “Love Love Love Sarah.” That was me. It was like one of our conversations had been copied and pasted from years ago and just…reinserted into reality.
I felt my stomach clench as I realized that the messages were old, had to be old. Roger was dead. Another came in at that moment. “See you soon cutie cakes.” Ugh, that nickname. He’d used that when you were 22 and first met. He’d barely dated before and it was almost embarrassing how hard he’d tried to fit the role of boyfriend. But the email he’d used was a work email. Professional sounding and adult. He hadn’t had that email in 2010, or probably any email. Also, why would I be sending him a text saying I was coming home when we were 22? We didn’t live together until we were married, four years later. These emails had to be now, had to be from him - from us.
I don’t know what I was thinking, I dropped the laptop and bolted to my car before realizing I had absolutely no idea where I was going. I walked sheepishly back into the apartment. Going back over the texts, I found only one that could pinpoint any location whatsoever. It was a Tuesday night and he’d sent “I’m headed to Publix, want anything?” Publix, that wasn’t a local store. Some brief research told me it was in the Southeast. I remembered Roger talking about living in a small town in Florida for a summer as a teenager, and remembered him talking about going back someday. It was a start, and it was all I needed. I had to check.
The thirteen-hour drive from Baltimore to a town in Florida called Mount Dora left ample time for me to reconsider. I was doing the absolute opposite of what I set out to do - I was spending hours and hours of time with myself. Time that, when not driving, could be used to think. Driving through mountains and valleys and rivers, all the places Roger would’ve loved. He had a sort of calling to the wilderness that I’d never understood. I tolerated it more when we were younger, going on hikes and swims and bike rides. I had nothing against the wilderness, I just preferred my fun indoors.
The day before he’d left we’d gone kayaking with friends. I thought it was a perfect day, and for months I psychoanalyzed, went over every minute detail to see where I went wrong, where I pushed him away. I hadn’t complained. I’d gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn like he’d asked. I’d helped him put on sunscreen and I’d packed bags with beer and snacks. His friends are not necessarily my friends, especially so now, but I managed them. There was only one moment that stood out to me.
We’d gotten there early, even before his friends did. We sat in his car listening to music and waiting, and I could swear I saw him staring at me as if he were trying to memorize every detail of this moment. Why he picked a hot car at 9 am to memorize my face, I’ll never know. And I realized that it was the first time in a while I had caught him looking at me. He never made me feel unattractive, or unwanted, but it struck me that he didn’t often just look. I had wanted to ask him what he was thinking of before a pickup truck pulled up beside us and another couple came out to greet us.
I agonized over that moment in the following months, begged myself to go back in time and ask him what he was trying to find within me that he apparently never had. I pushed the memories away again. That pain had been sorted before. It didn’t need to make a comeback.
I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived in Mount Dora. A helpful sign to point me to where dead husbands go? No such luck. I drove in circles for hours. I had left my house in the late afternoon and driven overnight, so the sun was just beginning to rise as I drove looking for a sign that may or may not exist. I had just begun to feel stupid when I saw it - his car, parked outside of a home. It was painted a soft shade of blue and had freesias growing in the yard, set to bloom when it got colder. There was a stepping stone walkway to the front stair, connecting to a small but grand wraparound porch that had a bench facing the street. I didn’t know how to describe it other than eerily idyllic, as if someone had reached into my head and taken my every opinion on home decorating very very seriously.
I didn’t want to stalk them, I swear. But why would you buy a house with so many windows if you didn’t want people to look? There was a perfect view of the dining room table from behind a small shrub, and I happily accepted what seemed to be an open invitation to watch. I was there for a long time before I saw Roger walk into view, and I think I must’ve gasped aloud despite my better judgment. I mourned for this man. I took the blame for his death in the public eye, despite no search finding a body or any evidence of my supposed deed. Watching him there, ten feet in front of me in my dream house was too much to bear. Too much that is, until the woman walked into the frame.
I was too focused on what she was holding to take in details of her at first because if I had thought to ask myself what she could give him that I couldn’t I’d immediately answer my own question. She was holding a baby. Roger and I had gotten pregnant when I was twenty-three. The moment I saw those two lines on the stick, I remembered my mother telling me I was her miracle baby, that she’d fought hard to win me. I lost the baby within a matter of months. To me, it didn’t feel like a loss because I didn’t let myself think it existed to begin with, but Roger was devastated. He didn’t need to say anything for me to know it. He held my hand the whole way through and never once tried to make me guilty for not being able to carry his baby. And she had.
Someone told me once that if you ran into your own doppelgänger in person, you wouldn’t recognize them because you’re so used to being shown the reverse. It’s funny how right they were. Funny too, that someone besides myself would know this situation. Because I didn’t recognize the tightly wound curls or almond-shaped eyes at first. I didn’t recognize the dress I used to wear before I felt self-conscious about my legs, and I sure as hell didn’t recognize the scar on her right cheek, perfectly matching my left. When I recognized the clone of my younger self I suppressed a scream. I waited for her to do something to identify herself as the fake, something I would never do, and it didn’t come. That is, not while I was watching.
She handed the baby to Roger and set to work making pancakes. Looking closer still, she wasn’t an exact copy because she didn’t have my crow’s feet or my smile lines. She didn’t have exactly four grey hairs that she picked every morning, or bags under her eyes that you can only get from grieving a spouse. She didn’t have the small tattoo on my right arm of a bird to remember my grandmother, or the scar from where I’d managed to slice my thigh open with a shard of broken glass at our wedding. It was like looking into a mirror that made you ten years younger and I hated it. Hated her. She didn’t get to have both. She didn’t get to keep the baby and take my husband.
In contrast to my reflections’ youth and beauty, Roger looked like I knew him He had his thinning hair and what I lovingly referred to as his Old Man Glasses. When I realized that he’d left me for a younger version of myself, it hit me like a punch in the face. He didn’t get to leave his sad old wife behind and upgrade to the newest model. That just wasn’t fair.
Believe me when I say I thought of every possibility. I could burn down the house, or sneak in one of the windows, or intercept Roger on his way to work, or lure the baby into the woods with me, or warn my former self that Roger will leave her when he’s done. Warn her that I am her. At some point, I thought about holding my former self at knifepoint and making her choose between her husband and child. The anger, the resentment I felt for Roger’s betrayal bubbled over and fell to her as well. No one was safe from the white-hot rage of my fury. No one would be happy coming out of this.
At some point, Roger must’ve been off to work, as I still silently observed. I watched him kiss her, kiss the baby, and walk towards the front door. I watched him linger in the doorway, peeking out from where she could no longer see him, and I watched him watch her for a full minute. Something snapped into place within me. Sarah did not deserve my unkind behavior. Roger did, but I couldn’t blame him for loving me as I was. He had finally found the woman he fell in love with again. And he could watch her turn into me again. Maybe with a child, things would be different. Maybe he’d stay for its’ sake rather than mine. Maybe he’d come to a different conclusion than the first time around, know what to say and do to keep the love alive. Or maybe he wouldn’t, and he’d torture himself in circles of loving someone until he didn’t anymore. Maybe that’s what love is. But I deserve to be loved for more than a memory of who I was.
As I thought all of this and vowed to not take the revenge I so wanted, the scene in front of me shifted, as if sensing Roger’s car exited the driveway. The woman - the younger me - set the baby down gently in its high chair. She walked forward slowly, an indecipherable expression on her face. It almost looked as if she knew I lurked just behind the neatly trimmed hedge, as if she were putting on a show of walking towards me. She stared out the window, looking directly at my hiding spot. I was sure she hadn’t seen me, but nevertheless, she made direct eye contact and smiled serenely.
What began as an understated, gentle smile grew larger, manic. Her lips spread wide, wider still, until they were a slit splitting her entire face cleanly in half. Her mouth opened, showing sharp daggers of teeth, rows upon rows of them. I felt faint, making eye contact with this hideous thing that bore my face, watching it smile at me with that fanged, toothy grin stretching all across its - across my face. I screamed. What else could I do? Her gaping mouth closed, leaving no trace of the demonic horror, melting back into the shy smile I’d seen before. She broke eye contact for a single moment to glance back at the baby, who I realized was also looking at me, and smiling just a bit too wide. She shut the curtains then, and I stared at them with a blank expression for what must’ve been a solid five minutes, just trying to get my thoughts together before driving in silence back home.
Whatever the thing was that shared my face, Roger had played right into its hand. I can’t say I was happy - the woman inside of me, the one I kept insisting was gone still loved the Roger she’d met when they were practically children. Not enough to ever seek him out again, as he had so clearly done, but enough to be sad at the fate he’d condemned himself to. I let the man in my memories die, just as the previous iteration of myself had died when he’d left. Roger had made his decision, and one way or another he’d live with it.
If I ever happen to see myself at 22 again, I’ll thank her for luring away my husband. His leaving made room for me to become who I now am, no longer stifled by the expectation of who I was. The fact that she was able to take him means he never was mine, not really. He never found the woman I became, always searching for the one I’d been. I deserve to be loved in the present tense, and Roger deserves exactly what’s coming for him.