I stood frozen, staring at the headstone,

waiting for my brain to correct what my eyes were seeing. The photograph wasn’t of a stranger. It wasn’t of a woman I didn’t know. It was me. My face. My smile. My name carved into stone as “Beloved Wife, taken too soon.” My knees weakened so fast I dropped to the grass, the flowers scattering across the soil like something had been violently ripped out of my hands. The date of death was two years before I had even met my husband. I shook my head, whispering no, over and over, as if repetition could rewrite marble. But what shook me most wasn’t just the impossible gravestone—it was the fresh marks around it. Clean soil. Recent maintenance. Someone had been visiting it.

Behind me, a voice spoke softly. “You shouldn’t have come here.” I turned so quickly I nearly fell. My husband stood a few meters away, hands in his coat pockets, face pale but composed, like he had rehearsed this moment. My throat went dry. “Who is she?” I managed. He looked at the grave, then back at me. “That’s the thing,” he said quietly. “There was never a first wife.” The world tilted again as he stepped closer, his voice lowering. “You were chosen because you look like someone who can be rewritten.” And then I noticed something worse—the matching ring on the stone, identical to mine, with a second inscription beneath mine already carved, waiting for a second name to be added beside it.