Dead Three Years, My Wife Wants Me to Take the Blame for Her First Love

I have been dead for three years.

Today, my lawyer wife showed up at my overgrown childhood home in the countryside, clutching a printed plea deal.

She couldn't find me anywhere, so she eventually had to knock on a neighbor's door to ask for my whereabouts.

Mike has been dead for a long time, the neighbor told her flatly. "Word is, right after he got out of prison, the victims' families tracked him down and beat him to death."

My wife refused to believe a single word. She was convinced the neighbor and I were running some kind of sick con.

She scoffed, her face twisting with absolute disgust. "He spent a couple of years behind bars, and now he's got the nerve to fake his own death to avoid me?"

"You tell him something for me. If he doesn't show up in court this Monday, his crazy mother locked up in that asylum won't see another dime of my money!"

With that, she turned on her heel and stormed off.

The neighbor watched her stubborn, retreating figure and let out a heavy sigh. "But his mother already starved to death in that ward a long time ago..."

01

I floated in the weed-choked yard of my old estate, watching Diana stumble awkwardly through the dead grass in her designer stilettos.

She was tightly gripping a few sheets of paper. A confession form, I figured, meant to make me take the fall one more time.

"Mike! Get out here! Do you think hiding in this dump is funny?"

She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her voice bounced off the empty, decaying walls of the farmhouse.

"If I hadn't pulled strings back then, you would have been beaten to a pulp inside! Now I actually need you, and you have the guts to hide from me?"

Listening to Diana talk about the past with zero remorse felt like an ice pick driving straight into my chest.

Three years ago, she said the exact same things.

Back then, Oliver had driven drunk and hit someone. Diana came to me with fake evidence and a cold ultimatum.

"It's just two years. You go in for two years, and I guarantee your mother gets the absolute best medical care. But if you say no..."

I remember staring at her in pure disbelief. We fought until I flipped the dining table.

"Diana! I am your husband! How could you throw me in a cell just to save him?"

She didn't even bother to explain herself. She just looked at me with a sickening amount of contempt.

"Either sign the confession, or watch your mother's treatment get cut off today. Take your pick."

And now, here she was again, wearing the exact same ugly expression.

It was late into the night, but Diana was still yelling.

The noise finally woke up Mrs. Gable next door. The older woman shoved her window open and poked her head out.

"What is all that screaming about at this hour? Nobody lives there anymore!"

Diana immediately aimed her hostility at the old woman.

"You know Mike, don't you? Is he hiding in there?"

Mrs. Gable squinted through her reading glasses for a good while before letting out a soft sound of realization.

"Oh, you mean Mike? He passed away almost three years ago."

Diana's face froze for a fraction of a second. "What did you just say? Dead?"

"That's right. He didn't even make it two days out of prison before he was killed. People say it was the family of the victims from that old case. Beat him till he stopped breathing right on the spot."

Mrs. Gable frowned, her tone turning sour. "Who exactly are you to him? How do you not know this?"

"Impossible!" Diana's voice suddenly spiked in pitch. "Someone like him wouldn't just..."

Before she could even finish her sentence, her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone. She dialed Oliver's number.

She put it on speaker. Oliver's smooth voice drifted out into the cold night air.

"Hey D, what's wrong?"

"Oliver, that fifty grand you said you gave to the victim's family. Did you actually hand it over?"

There was a half-second pause on the other end, followed by Oliver's confident reply.

"Of course I did. Handed it to them myself. Why?"

I hovered right next to the phone, so close I could hear the static, and almost let out a string of curses.

He didn't do a damn thing.

When I was released, those relatives showed up at my door, screaming about getting blood for blood.

It was only as I was being beaten within an inch of my life that I realized Oliver had never paid them a single cent. They hadn't even heard the word "settlement."

I died in Oliver's place.

Hearing his lie, the tension drained out of Diana's face.

She snapped her head back toward Mrs. Gable, glaring with pure revulsion.

"I knew it. You and Mike are just teaming up to play me!"

"So what if he had to sit in a cell for two years? Now he's playing dead to hide from me?"

"You tell him, Mrs. Gable. If he doesn't show his face in court next Monday, that crazy mother of his can rot!"

She spun around and marched away, her heels clicking sharply against the stone path with absolute finality.

Mrs. Gable watched her go, shaking her head at the empty air.

"Love really makes a fool out of people. Mike's poor mother passed on ages ago. Heard nobody even checked her room for days. Starved right to the bone."

02

Diana practically fled the old property, totally missing Mrs. Gable's final words.

My soul, tethered to her by some invisible, suffocating thread, had no choice but to drift along.

Her cab sped through the city, eventually pulling up to Oliver's downtown penthouse overlooking the bay.

The moment the door swung open, Oliver was right there, a desperate, eager smile plastered across his face.

"D, how did it go? Did Mike agree?"

Diana paused as she took off her coat, avoiding his eyes.

"He... wasn't home."

The smile slid off Oliver's face, instantly replaced by a masterfully crafted look of guilt.

"Is he still mad at me? Mad about the time I made him take the fall? I know I put him through hell."

He looked down, his voice dropping to a miserable mumble as his eyes perfectly welled up with tears.

"Maybe we should just drop it. It's my mess anyway. I can't drag him down again."

"It's just... if I really get locked up, what are you going to do all by yourself..."

Diana always crumbled when he played this card. She immediately pulled him into a tight hug, her brow furrowing with protective anger.

"Stop talking like that. What right does he have to be mad?"

"I paid him a massive amount of hush money last time, and I took care of the victims' families! It was just a couple of years inside. It's not like I asked him to die for you. He has absolutely no reason to be difficult!"

She gripped Oliver's shoulders, her tone absolute.

"Don't worry. I will find him. He has to take the heat for you this time, no matter what."

Floating right beside the living room chandelier, I caught the fleeting, smug smirk on Oliver's lips. A coldness seeped into my ghostly core.

I never saw a penny of that money.

And those "taken care of" families were the reapers who took my life.

Oliver buried his face in the crook of Diana's neck, smiling his victorious little smile right where she couldn't see.

I reached out, desperately wanting to wrap my hands around his throat, but my fingers just phased through his flesh like smoke.

"Trust me," Diana whispered, rubbing his back. "I'll track him down. He is going to fix this."

Determined to dig me out of whatever hole she thought I was in, Diana drove back to my old farmhouse at the crack of dawn.

Morning light spilled through the shattered windowpanes of the decaying house.

She stood in the overgrown yard, her frown deepening by the second.

"These flowers..."

She crouched down, running a finger over a massive bush of dead, blackened roses.

She knew how much I worshipped my garden. Unless something physically stopped me, I would never have let them wither like this.

I hovered behind her as she pulled out her phone, taking photos of the cobwebs thick on the window sills.

Her thumb hovered over the screen for a long time before she finally called her assistant.

"I need you to trace every move Mike has made. Dig up everything."

She hung up and took a few steps closer to the porch.

My heart would have hammered in my chest if I still had one.

Right there, just past the corner, the concrete was still stained with my dried, blackened blood from three years ago.

Just two more steps.

Suddenly, a piercing ringtone shattered the silence.

It was her custom ringtone for Oliver.

She answered, and Oliver's panicked voice blasted through the speaker.

"D! I just heard the victims got their hands on new evidence. If we don't handle this right now, I'm completely screwed!"

"What?!" Diana's face drained of color. "I'm heading back right now!"

She turned and sprinted for the car, abandoning the bloodstain and the dead roses without a second thought.

I could only laugh bitterly. It didn't matter what was happening; her precious Oliver always came first.

03

I was dragged along as Diana pushed her car well past the speed limit, the city blurring into gray streaks outside the window.

She drummed her manicured nails frantically against the steering wheel, muttering to herself.

"We have time. We have to have time..."

The Bluetooth clicked on. Her assistant's voice filled the cabin.

"Diana, I still can't find a single trace of Mike anywhere in the system. It's almost like he really is..."

"Useless!" she screamed, slamming her palm against the horn. "Keep digging! Hack into the city's traffic grids if you have to!"

She killed the call, her breathing ragged.

Then, her eyes suddenly lit up. It was that familiar, calculating look she always got right before she won a tough case.

She dialed Oliver, her voice actually trembling with excitement.

"Oliver, I figured it out! That old bat is still locked up in the psychiatric ward. Mike cares about her more than anything in the world..."

My soul violently violently shook. The image of my mother, reduced to skin and bones, flashed before my eyes.

After all these years, she still wanted to use my mother as a bargaining chip!

I screamed at her to stop, but she couldn't hear a thing.

Intoxicated by the thrill of finding my weak point, she slammed on the gas and aimed the car straight for the asylum.

Her heels echoed like gunshots down the sterile, fluorescent-lit hallways.

The air was thick with the suffocating stench of bleach and stale urine.

Diana pinched her nose in disgust and raised her voice.

"Somebody get out here! Where is Mike's mother? Bring her out to me right now."

A middle-aged man in gold-rimmed glasses rushed out of an office.

"Counselor, what an unexpected surprise..."

"Cut the crap, Dr. Lawson," she snapped. "Which room is Eleanor in? I'm taking her with me."

Dr. Lawson's face hardened, a thin layer of sweat instantly breaking out across his forehead.

"Well... you might not be aware, but Eleanor is..."

"She's what? Oliver was just here last month paying ten grand for her care! Take me to her right now!"

My spirit twisted in agony.

That ten grand went straight into Oliver and Lawson's pockets.

Dr. Lawson scrambled to his desk, frantically clicking through his patient database until a death certificate popped up on the monitor.

[Time of Death: March 15, 2023. Cause of Death: Severe Malnutrition.]

"Counselor... Eleanor passed away two years ago."

"Bullshit!"

Diana shoved him aside and grabbed the mouse, her eyes boring into the screen.

I watched her pupils dilate, her fingers trembling slightly against the plastic mouse.

But a second later, she let out a dry, mocking laugh.

"Wow. How much did Mike pay you to forge this, Doctor?"

She leaned in close, dropping her voice to a lethal whisper.

"Do you know the maximum sentence for falsifying medical records?"

Dr. Lawson looked like his knees were about to give out.

"I swear to God, this is the official system! You can check the registry number with the state..."

"Shut up." Diana slammed the laptop shut and marched toward the door. "I'll look into this myself. And if I find out you two are playing games with me..."

She didn't finish the threat, but Lawson already looked like a corpse.

I knew exactly what he was terrified of.

He was the one who personally injected my mother with fatal doses of sedatives.

When Diana got back into her car, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely turn the key.

She called Oliver, her voice sickeningly sweet.

"Hey babe, don't panic. I will find that old hag. Mike does whatever she says..."

Sitting in the passenger seat, watching the absolute devotion in her eyes, a wave of hatred so pure it burned washed over me.

If ghosts could cry, I would have wept blood.

04

But Diana only ever saved her gentleness for him.

The moment she hung up, her foot went flat to the floor. She tore through the streets, blowing past three red lights.

She screamed at her assistant over the phone, gripping the leather wheel until her knuckles turned white.

"Investigate that hospital right now! I want a full audit! Mike definitely bribed them to hide her!"

I looked at her twisted, furious profile and couldn't help but laugh.

The irony was staggering. The hospital did fake the records.

But it wasn't my money. And they weren't protecting me.

They were covering up for her precious, untouchable Oliver.

Watching the city blur past, I remembered a rainy night three years ago.

Oliver had his arm wrapped around Diana's waist.

"That old woman is a massive problem," he had whispered to her. "She's at the precinct every single day. If she keeps making noise, she's going to blow our whole cover."

Diana hadn't even looked up from her phone.

"Handle it however you want," she had replied, utterly indifferent.

And just like that, Oliver slapped a fake psychiatric hold on my mother and locked her in a living hell, stripping away her freedom and eventually her life.

The violent screech of tires yanked me back to the present.

Diana had slammed the brakes near City Hall, but she made no move to get out.

She was staring at a text from Oliver.

"D, the trial is tomorrow. Why haven't we found Mike yet?"

Her manicured fingers tapped a frantic rhythm on the steering wheel before she finally called him back.

"Oliver, listen to me. We have to trigger an emergency to push the court date back."

Oliver sounded confused. "An emergency?"

"Yes. A sudden illness, a severe accident, something undeniable that forces the judge to delay..."

Oliver went dead silent on the line.

A minute later, a blood-curdling scream erupted from the phone, followed by the heavy, sickening thud of someone tumbling down a flight of wooden stairs.

All the blood drained from Diana's face.

"Oliver? Oliver!"

There was a chaotic shuffling sound, and then a panic-stricken voice came through.

"Ms. Diana! Mr. Oliver... he just fell down the entire staircase!"

I floated behind her as she sprinted through the sliding doors of the emergency room.

Oliver was lying on a gurney, his right leg already in a thick plaster cast, looking as pale as a ghost.

Diana threw herself over him, tears freely pouring down her cheeks.

"Are you insane? We could have figured something else out! Why would you hurt yourself like this?"

Oliver managed to put on a weak, tragic smile.

"I just... I owe you too much. I couldn't bear watching you run yourself ragged trying to fix my mistakes."

Diana let out a ragged breath and kissed his forehead tenderly.

"You idiot. But... the doctor said your tibia is fractured. You need two weeks of bed rest. That pushes the trial back by at least half a month."

"You just focus on healing. I'll handle the rest."

By the time she walked out of the hospital, the cold, ruthless lawyer was back.

She called her assistant.

"What did you find? Good. Now scrub every location Mike might be hiding. His old friends, his favorite bars, anywhere..."

I hovered in her shadow as she slid into the driver's seat.

She would never guess that the man she was tearing the city apart to find was sitting right beside her.