I stared at the photograph.
Then something about the woman caught my attention.
Her necklace.
I had seen it before.
Not on her.
On Daniel’s desk.
A small gold necklace with a silver heart.
Daniel had told me it belonged to his sister.
His sister had been dead for six years.
I looked up.
“Where was this photograph taken?”
Marcus answered.
“A hotel outside the city.”
“When?”
He checked the file.
“Three weeks ago.”
Three weeks ago, Daniel had told me he was working late every Thursday.
I suddenly understood.
There had never been overtime.
There had never been business meetings.
There had been another life.
And somehow, that other life had become more important than ours.
But the biggest revelation came the following morning.
Marcus returned to the hospital.
This time, he looked serious.
“We found the woman.”
My hands tightened around the blanket.
“Who is she?”
He placed another photograph in front of me.
I stared at it.
Then I stopped breathing.
It wasn’t a stranger.
It was Daniel’s former wife.
The woman he had told me had died years before.
I felt the room tilt.
“That’s impossible.”
Marcus shook his head.
“She changed her name.”
I looked at the photograph again.
