Love in Hiding

Kate's POV

I'm dead.

Here I am, watching my own husband Brian McVeigh crouch next to what's left of me like I'm just another case file. The garbage dump reeks of rot and filth, but there's something worse mixed in.

Jesus Christ. Look at me. I'm chopped up like meat at a butcher shop. Four or five pieces of what used to be Kate McVeigh scattered across the dirt like garbage. My head is completely destroyed, just mashed-up bone and brain matter that makes me want to vomit if I still could. The other cops are gagging and turning away, but not Brian. Not my loving husband.

I know it's totally normal that he can't recognize me with my head all messed up like this, but deep down I still have this tiny bit of hope that he'll recognize me, that he'll realize the person who died is his wife. But he not, he's taking notes like this is nothing.

Are you fucking kidding me right now? I want to grab him and shake him until his teeth rattle. That mangled corpse is your wife! That's ME lying there in pieces!

But he can't hear me screaming. Nobody can. I've been dead for a week, stuck in this nightmare watching my own husband investigate my murder.

Brian scribbles in his notepad with the same energy as someone making a grocery list. "Female victim, approximately 25-30 years old. Dismembered. Estimated time of death one week ago." His voice is flat.

Suddenly, I notice my left hand. My wedding ring is still there. The diamond sparkles in the weak morning light, and I'm hope.

The ring. Oh God, please let him recognize the ring.

This is it. This has to be it. He's going to pick up my hand and see our wedding ring and everything will click. He'll realize he's been standing over his own wife's butchered corpse. He'll break down. He'll hold what's left of me and cry and promise to hunt down whoever did this.

Brian picks up my severed hand like he's handling a piece of trash. He examines the ring, then slides it off my finger and drops it into a plastic evidence bag.

"Wedding ring, white gold, single diamond. Bagged as evidence."

That's it?

That's fucking it?

I want to claw his eyes out. I want to scream. You heartless bastard, that's OUR wedding ring! The one you spent a year saving up for! The one I never took off, not once in five years of marriage!

The humiliation is worse than being murdered. He doesn't even recognize it. My own husband looks at our wedding ring, the symbol of the best day of our lives, and sees nothing but evidence to catalog.

How did I become so invisible to you? How did I become so worthless that you can't even recognize the ring you put on my finger?

God, I was so stupid. So fucking naive.

I can see that night at Murphy's Bar like it's happening right now. Me in that red dress I thought made me look sexy, you unable to take your eyes off me. I thought it was love. I thought you were different from every other guy who'd ever looked right through me.

"Hey there, I'm Brian," you'd said, and I practically melted on the spot.

"Kate," I'd whispered back, already gone.

We talked until the bar closed. You told me about your new job as deputy, I told you about teaching kindergarten. You walked me home and kissed me on my front porch, and I swear to God I thought I was living in a fairy tale.

Three months later you proposed. Right there on that same porch.

"I don't know if I'm ready for marriage," you'd said, fumbling with the ring box like a nervous schoolboy. "But I can't imagine my life without you."

You lying piece of shit. You could imagine it just fine, couldn't you? You imagined it every day for the last three years.

"Then don't imagine it," I'd said, throwing my arms around you like the desperate fool I was. "Just marry me."

Just marry me. Jesus, I practically begged you to trap yourself with me. No wonder you started to hate me.

Our wedding day, you cried when I walked down the aisle. I thought it was because you were overwhelmed with love. Now I'm wondering if you were crying because you realized you'd made the biggest mistake of your life.

Well, we had our happy times once upon a time, but Isabella showed up and ruined everything. She moved into that apartment above Henderson's bakery three years ago and immediately had every man in town panting after her like dogs in heat.

But you were the worst. You were married, Brian! You had a wife who loved you more than her own life, and you threw it all away for some blonde slut who probably wouldn't give you the time of day if you weren't wearing a badge.

I tried so hard to ignore it at first. The way you'd drive past the bakery ten times a day on "patrol." The way you'd bring her up in every conversation like she was some brilliant oracle instead of just another woman.

"Isabella thinks we should install better streetlights," you'd say over dinner, and I wanted to throw my plate at your head.

Since when do you care what some random newcomer thinks about anything?

But I just smiled and nodded like the pathetic doormat I'd become. Please still love me, I was thinking every single day. Please don't leave me for her.

You started coming home later and later. "Working overtime," you said, but we both knew that was bullshit. There's barely enough crime in this town to keep you busy during regular hours, let alone overtime.

You were with her. I knew it, you knew I knew it, but we both pretended everything was fine. I asked about your day, you'd grunt one-word answers and disappear into your study to text her or call her or whatever the hell you two did behind my back.

That's when I knew I'd lost you completely. That's when I knew my marriage was over and I was too much of a coward to admit it.

Brian's phone buzzes and he looks at it like it's personally offending him.

"McVeigh," he answers, and I can hear the irritation dripping from his voice.

"Brian, it's Zoey." Thank God, someone who actually cares about me. "Kate hasn't been to school all week. Do you know where she is?"

"She could be anywhere," Brian says, and I swear he kicks at a piece of garbage just to emphasize how little he cares. "Maybe she went on vacation or something. Who knows with her."

Who knows with her?

WHO KNOWS WITH HER?

I haven't taken a vacation day in three years! I've never missed work without calling! I don't just disappear, you piece of shit!

But Zoey knows me better than my own husband ever did.

"Kate would never just leave without telling someone," she snaps, and I can hear her getting pissed off. "She's not the type to abandon her students in the middle of the semester. Something's wrong, Brian."

"Look, I'm at a crime scene right now," Brian says, getting more annoyed by the second. "Can we talk about this later?"

"A crime scene? What happened?"

"Body found at the dump. I've got to go."

He hangs up without even letting her respond, shoving the phone back in his pocket like he can't wait to get rid of her.

At least someone gives a damn that I'm missing. Zoey knows I'd never abandon my kids. She knows something terrible happened to me. She's probably the only person in this whole town who's actually worried.

The phone rings again almost immediately. Brian looks at the screen, and something flickers across his face that makes my blood freeze. It's not annoyance this time. It's something worse.

"Yeah?" he answers, and his voice is completely different now. Softer. Intimate.

"Brian, what are you doing?" The voice is smooth, feminine, with just a hint of an accent. "Want to grab dinner tonight?"

That voice.

Oh my God, that voice.

I know that voice.

"I'm working," Brian says, but there's no irritation like there was with Zoey. He actually sounds apologetic. "Rain check?"

"Of course, darling. Call me when you're free."

The line goes dead and Brian stares at his phone for way too long before putting it away.

That voice. It's echoing in my head now, getting louder and more familiar by the second. It's like trying to remember a song you heard in a nightmare.

My head starts pounding, somehow I can still feel pain even though I'm dead. The sound is getting louder, more insistent, like someone hammering nails directly into my skull.

And then, like a dam bursting in my brain, everything comes flooding back.

Oh Jesus. Oh God no.

I remember how I died.