My Fake Husband's AI Predicted My Murder

The Things the Camera Missed

Theo turned the photograph over and smiled before he remembered what morning it was.

"She hated that picture."

Nadia stood on a windy pier with her coat open, laughing at something outside the frame. On the back, a print-shop stamp carried a date six months after she died.

"I had copies made for the memorial," Theo said. "The picture's older than that."

Aria put it down. She had already been assembling the impossible in her head, six extra months of a dead woman's life, a message carried through the wrong door. It was an ordinary photograph ordered by a grieving brother.

"You thought it was something," he said.

"For a second."

"So did I, once. A parking bill came after the funeral. I spent half a day calling the council."

He tucked the picture back into his coat. Aria wanted to ask what it had felt like when someone finally explained the bill. She did not want to use his grief to make the room less difficult.

At eleven, they went back to the apartment with Mara. The building manager had changed the emergency service connection and arranged for a locksmith to replace the shared entrance lock. The service could not stop them using a mechanical key. Theo paid the locksmith and handed every new key to Aria.

She gave him one.

He looked at it on his palm.

"You still live here," she said. "Until we decide otherwise. That doesn't give you a key to my room."

"I know."

"You knew before."

He put the key away without answering.

Aria went to the wardrobe and took out the white shirt. Its right cuff had the missing button. In the simulation, the left cuff had flashed bare.

She stood with the shirt hanging from her fingers until Mara came to the door.

"They guessed," Aria said.

"Or reversed an image. Or got a wardrobe detail wrong."

"I thought it proved they'd been here the morning before the rehearsal."

Mara took the shirt and looked at both cuffs. "It proved you were scared. That's enough for the people who sent it."

Aria sat on the bed. She had spent the night imagining someone in her room, close enough to see a broken thread. She still did not know whether anyone had been there. The wrong cuff weakened one reason for believing it. It did nothing to explain the exact phrase used in their private agreement.

Theo stood in the hall, holding a small tin of sewing things.

"You were looking for this yesterday."

"Where was it?"

"In the hall cupboard. Under the Christmas lights."

He put it down and went away. The tin had belonged to Nadia. Aria had been using it for almost a year without knowing that. Inside, the needles were pushed through a scrap of blue felt, and a label in round handwriting said THE GOOD SCISSORS ARE NOT FOR WIRE.

She laughed before she could stop herself.

From the hall, Theo said, "She meant me."

"I guessed."

Mara went to take a call in the kitchen. Aria threaded a needle. After three attempts, she got it through the eye. Theo sat on the floor outside her room with his back against the opposite wall.

They had lived like this for months, close enough to hear each other, separated by a line both had helped draw. She had once found it peaceful. Now she kept trying to decide whether peace was something he had performed well.

"Did you ever use the emergency key?" she asked.

He did not look up.

"Once."

The needle pricked her finger.

"When?"

"March. You didn't come home from the clinic interview. You weren't answering. I came up to check whether you'd left a note."

"I was staying with a client. I told Mara."

"I know. She called me afterward."

"Did you come in here?"

"No. I checked the kitchen. Then I waited in the living room."

Aria pressed the bleeding finger into the white cloth, leaving a tiny red mark beside the button.

"You could have told me the next morning."

"You were laughing about the client's dog eating your notes. I liked that you were happy."

"So you kept your part of the night to yourself."

"Yes."

She finished attaching the button while he sat in the corridor. The work was poor. It pulled the cuff into a little pucker. She decided to leave it that way.

"I don't know how to stop watching you," she said.

"I don't know how to stop trying to look innocent."

That brought her eyes to his face. He looked exhausted by the admission.

"You keep putting your hands where I can see them."

"I know."

"It makes you look as if you're following instructions."

"Everything does. If I go near you, I'm cornering you. If I stay away, I know I'm guilty. If I offer help, I'm buying something."

"You did hide the key."

"I did. You get to be angry about what I did. I can't spend the next seven days apologizing for every possible gesture too."

Six days now. Neither corrected him. The difference between an exhausted person's estimate and the date on the screen did not need another argument.

Aria put the sewing tin on the bed.

"Come in," she said.

He looked at her, then got up. He sat on the chair by the window rather than the bed. She did not tell him where to sit. The absence of that small instruction felt more intimate than it should have.

For a while, they said nothing. Outside, a delivery driver shouted at a cyclist. The apartment remained the same size. Nothing appeared on her phone to tell her whether allowing him through the doorway had made her safer.

Mara returned with a message from June. The supposed future office video had been inserted into the camera service as an imported file. It had not come from the camera itself. The badge event was being checked separately. Someone had made a convincing accusation from things that did not necessarily belong together.

Theo listened without visible triumph.

"There's also a courier," Mara said. "He says you hired him for a delivery tomorrow night. He has a key."

"What delivery?" Aria asked.

Mara looked at Theo.

"Something for your wife. He was told she wouldn't be able to sign for it."