My Fiancé's Dead Wife is Texting Me

The first message arrived while I was trying to establish who had owned a mourning brooch between 1938 and 1955.

DON’T MARRY MY HUSBAND.

I read it twice, then checked that it had actually been sent to me. An unfamiliar number, no photograph, no earlier conversation. Beside my phone, the brooch lay on its padded tray, a curl of someone’s hair sealed behind scratched glass.

I laughed, then glanced toward the open doorway. No one was there to ask what I was laughing at.

Three months before marrying Adrian Vale, I had grown accustomed to strangers offering opinions about our engagement. One woman had written to the museum director demanding that I be dismissed for pursuing a donor. Another had sent me a six-page explanation of why my birth chart made me unsuitable for him. Our wedding announcement had apparently invited public consultation.

I turned the phone over and returned to the dealer’s inventory. The brooch’s supposed owner had died in 1941, but his widow’s probate list contained no jewelry. That didn’t disprove the story. It did mean I couldn’t write continuous family ownership in the acquisition report simply because someone had put it in a sales catalogue.

I circled the claim. Underneath, I wrote: Request original estate inventory.

“Please tell me you’re coming out of here.”

Maya stood in the doorway holding a paper bag against her chest. A damp patch had spread beneath one corner.

“Is that lunch or a conservation emergency?” I asked.

“Soup. Which becomes a conservation emergency if you make me carry it much longer.”

I followed her to the staff kitchen. She unpacked two containers while I washed my hands, then nudged mine across the table with the heel of her palm.

“Your wedding planner called reception.”

I stopped reaching for a spoon. “Why?”

“Apparently you haven’t answered an email about chairs.”

“I answered it yesterday.”

“Different chairs.”

Maya tore open a packet of crackers. I took out my phone, ready to forward the entire chair correspondence to Adrian, and saw the anonymous message again.

No follow-up. Whoever had sent it was waiting for me to supply the conversation.

“What?” Maya asked.

“Nothing. Wedding nonsense.”

She glanced at my left hand. The diamond caught the fluorescent light when I picked up my spoon. I had once worn a cheap silver ring on that finger because I liked the shape of it; now strangers enlarged photographs to estimate the value of what Adrian had given me.

Before him, I could eat lunch with soup on my sleeve and no one cared. Last week, a society columnist had described my coat as an attempt to signal “accessible elegance.” The lining was coming loose. I’d been meaning to sew it for a month.

My phone rang while Maya was rinsing her container. Adrian’s name appeared above the photograph I’d taken of him on my sofa, asleep with an open book resting on his chest.

“I’m eating,” I told him.

“All right.”

“I thought that might be your reason for calling.”

“Should it have been?”

I smiled and leaned back. “Maya says I’m becoming difficult to feed.”

“I was calling about the rehearsal dinner. But now I’m concerned about Maya.”

From the sink, she lifted a wet hand in acknowledgment. Adrian turned away from someone at his end of the call. I heard a door close, then the scrape of a chair.

“The planner sent me three table arrangements,” he said. “You’re listed as having approved the one with the raised flower stands.”

“I approved tulips.”

“These appear to require scaffolding.”

I opened the email. There they were: flowers elevated above each table on slender gold towers. I imagined trying to find Evelyn on the other side of one.

“I wanted people to be able to talk to each other.”

“Then we’ll change them.”

“Your mother chose those, didn’t she?”

“Probably.”

I scrolled down to the cost and stopped eating. “Adrian, that’s more than my car.”

“Your car has a door that only opens from the inside.”

“It opens from the outside if you know how.”

“Claire.” He paused, and I stopped scrolling. “You can cancel any part of this you don’t want. You don’t have to produce a wedding for my family.”

On the refrigerator opposite me, someone had pinned a photograph from the museum staff picnic. I was wearing Adrian’s sweater in it, the sleeves pushed up unevenly. He’d come straight from the airport and spent the afternoon sitting on damp grass because I’d asked him to stay.

“I want the tulips,” I said. “In something people can see over.”

“Good. Send me the email.”

We talked for another few minutes. He’d be working late; I had a stack of accession reports and no particular desire to go home yet. Before he hung up, he asked about the brooch.

“Still missing seventeen years,” I said.

“Will the dealer give you more time?”

“He’ll have to. I haven’t approved the purchase.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

I stayed in the kitchen after the call ended, scraping the last of the soup from its container. We had been together eighteen months. I knew which shirts he left at my apartment, how he took his coffee after a sleepless night, how he listened when I explained a problem most people would have stopped following halfway through.

There were whole years of his life I knew only in outline. His first marriage was one of them. His wife had died four years ago, and he seldom spoke about her.

The message no longer seemed quite so funny.

Back in my office, I searched the unfamiliar number. Nothing useful appeared. I tried it without spaces, then with the country code. Still nothing.

I could send Adrian a screenshot. He would send it to Julian Cross, and before I finished my report I would be answering questions about everyone who had approached me that week. I remembered the forms after a photographer followed me into the museum car park. The guard who waited outside my office until Adrian was satisfied the man had left.

I wanted to know what this was before it became something other people handled. I opened the message and typed:

Who is this?

The reply came before I put the phone down.

You already know my name.

I moved my hand away from the brooch’s tray. Another message appeared beneath the first.

CELESTE VALE.