The Video Call from Hell Chapter 01

The Video Call from Hell Chapter 01

In the second year after my husband’s death, I somehow got through on a video call to him five years in the future.

“Ethan, you’re alive! Tell me where you are. I’ll come bring you home right now!”

I burst into tears of joy and scrambled to grab the car keys off the floor.

Then I heard him say, “The truth is, I staged my own death… so I could be with your best friend.”

My mind exploded with a deafening roar.

He went on as if he were discussing the weather.

“I was actually at my own funeral.”

“For every minute you cried at the memorial, I was fucking her in the back room of the funeral home. Her eyes were so red afterward, and you thought she’d been crying from grief.”

“Oh, and my mother and our son both knew I’d faked my death. Every year, they came up with excuses to visit us so we could all be together.”

The blood in my body seemed to freeze. My hand shook uncontrollably around my phone.

Ethan Bradford let out a breath, as if some unbearable weight had finally been lifted from his chest.

“Evelyn Carter, I’ve already told the truth to the version of you in the past.”

“Whether you want to keep living like a widow for a man who was never dead is entirely up to you.”

…

It felt as if all the strength had been drained from my body. I collapsed onto the floor.

Ethan frowned slightly and said, “Evelyn, your foot is bleeding.”

Only then did I notice the distorted bloody footprints across the floor.

When I had rushed to leave, I had knocked over a bottle. Shards of glass had pierced the sole of my foot.

I hadn’t felt a thing. All I’d been able to feel was the wild, delirious joy of getting back what I thought I had lost forever.

“The first-aid kit is in the drawer under the TV. There’s antiseptic and gauze inside.”

“You’re still so careless. When I’m not around, you have to learn how to take care of yourself.”

Ethan’s voice was as gentle as it had always been.

I had been clumsy since I was a child. I was always coming home with scrapes and bruises.

After I met Ethan, even the smallest bruise had been enough to make his heart ache.

“Your body doesn’t belong only to you. It belongs to me, too. I won’t allow you to hurt it.”

The sweet words he had once whispered seemed to echo in my ears.

Then, suddenly, I pressed down hard.

Like a madwoman, I shoved the shards deeper into my flesh.

This was a dream.

I was drunk.

Otherwise, how could Ethan have suddenly stopped loving me? How could everyone have been lying to me?

“Evelyn! Evelyn!”

Ethan was terrified by the sight of me losing control. He shouted in a panic, “Hurting yourself won’t change anything.”

“If you don’t believe me, look under the loose floor tile beneath the potted fiddle-leaf fig in the living room!”

I froze, then turned stiffly toward the plant standing only a few steps away.

I didn’t have the slightest bit of courage to move.

Ethan urged me impatiently.

Limping, I walked over, toppled the fiddle-leaf fig with all my strength, and pried up the loose floor tile.

Inside was a photo album.

The people in it were Ethan Bradford and my best friend, Serena Moore.

They had grown up together since they were kids.

The album recorded every beautiful moment they had shared.

They had played in the mud together as children and won a piano duet competition when they were teenagers.

Later, they had watched the northern lights and ridden hot-air balloons in Turkey.

Season after season, all over the world, they had left behind footprints side by side.

The way they looked at each other had changed from clear-eyed innocence to a love that lingered in every glance.

The last photograph was of Serena asleep, her face still flushed from sex.

On the back were two words.

“Wait for me.”

In that instant, the bubble of self-deception I had been living inside burst with a sharp pop.

The pain in my foot drilled straight into my heart, so intense that tears broke free and poured down my face.

I stared at my blood-soaked hands and remembered the way Ethan had looked two years ago, covered in blood.

That day had been my birthday.

I had begged him to take me scuba diving on a tropical island.

On the way there, we were caught in a terrible car crash.

He had shielded me tightly beneath his body.

He wanted to wipe the tears from my face, but he was afraid of getting blood on me.

“Don’t cry. As long as you’re here, how could I ever bear to leave?”

So it had all been fake.

My throat felt clogged with cotton, and my voice came out painfully hoarse.

“Why? Why did you marry me?”

Judging from the timeline in the album, he had already loved Serena before he ever met me.

Ethan sighed.

“Serena wanted me to marry you.”

Those words slammed into my heart like hail, cold and brutally painful.

“She realized I had feelings for her, so she chose to run away from them.”

“That was why she introduced you to me. Later, she asked me to marry you.”

“I listened to everything she said. I couldn’t help it. After all, I…”

His tone carried a helpless, indulgent tenderness.

So every bit of kindness he had ever shown me had been for the woman he truly loved.

And I had only been the clown in their twisted love story.

I forced a faint smile and gave a bitter laugh.

“Tell me where you are now.”

“Where are you and Serena?”