I thought I had buried my past when my husband Anthony disappeared during a storm three years ago. They never found his body, and I lost everything — including the baby I was carrying. The grief hollowed me out, and though life moved on, I didn’t. To face my fears, I finally took a solo trip to a distant beach. That’s where I saw him — Anthony — alive, holding hands with a woman and a little girl. My world crumbled all over again.

When I collapsed, he came to help, but he didn’t recognize me. He called himself “Drake.” I was hysterical, insisting he was my husband, but he looked at me like a stranger. Later that evening, the woman — Kaitlyn — came to my hotel room and told me the truth. Anthony had washed ashore years ago, with no memory of who he was. She had been his nurse. They fell in love during his recovery and built a life together.

I met him again, showed him our wedding photos, even the ultrasound. He was kind but distant — as if none of it reached him. The man I once loved looked at Kaitlyn and her daughter with the same adoration he used to reserve for me. I realized then — he wasn’t mine anymore. That version of him was gone.

So I let him go. I told him goodbye and walked away. I had clung to a ghost for years. Now it was time to live again — not in the past, but in the world still waiting for me.