I Took My Husband’s Phone In For Repair. The Technician, A Family Friend, Pulled Me Aside And Said,

He knew I was right. I looked back at the phone—at the messages that laid out my absence like a calendar entry. Clinical.

Scheduled. As if inevitable. “I need to copy these,” I said.

“All of them. And then I need you to repair this phone as if nothing happened.”

“Stella…” His voice cracked. “What are you going to do?”

I thought about Robert pacing the kitchen last night, checking his phone.

Had he been checking these messages, making sure they were still queued—planning my disappearance with the same care he used to plan our vacation to Acadia last summer? “I’m going to find out who L is,” I said quietly. “I’m going to find out exactly what he’s planning, and then I’m going to make sure the only thing that disappears in January is his credibility.”

Kevin stared at me.

Then slowly, he nodded. He pulled out his own phone. “I’ll take screenshots.

I’ll send them to my encrypted email. Evidence.”

As he photographed each message, I forced myself to read them again—to see past the shock and fear and focus on what they revealed. Robert had been planning this for months.

He’d laid groundwork with our family doctor, making me look unstable. He’d reviewed our finances, our insurance, our estate planning. He’d found someone—this mysterious L—to help him.

And he’d been so confident, so certain of success, that he’d scheduled messages to send after I was “gone,” a timeline of triumph. He’d made one crucial mistake. One small, arrogant error that men like Robert always made.

He’d underestimated me. He’d looked at his 66-year-old wife with her yoga classes and book clubs and salmon dinners and seen someone easy to erase. He’d forgotten that librarians are researchers.

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