After My Death, He Regretted Madly

Chapter 8

Her cutting words sent a sharp, sudden twist through my heart.

I stared at her, unblinking. The face that had once been so soft and warm was now sharp with petty calculation, unrecognizable from the woman I used to know.

Javier cut in flatly, "Obstructing official duty can get you detained if the offense is serious."

My mom glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then stepped aside grumpily. "Hurry up, then. I have already made plans to play poker with people."

No sooner had the words left her mouth than her phone rang. She picked it up, and her face immediately lit up.

"Got it, got it, I'm on my way right now. What, you think I'd duck out 'cause I lost a few rounds? I get plenty of money every month, like I care about that chump change I lost?"

I froze mid-step.

'Money? What money was she talking about?'

I scanned the room. The old ceiling fan we'd never had the heart to replace was gone, swapped out for a brand new air conditioner. The solid mahogany sofa had been traded for a fancy leather one too.

The only thing that hadn't changed was my dad's memorial portrait, wiped spotless and propped up quietly in its usual spot.

The floodgates of memory burst open with a roar all at once.

"I'm sorry, Jennifer, there's an emergency call-out at the precinct. Can Mom go to your parent-teacher conference this time, okay?"

"How could I miss my little girl's birthday? C'mon, guess what your old man brought you!"

"It's that green grape cake you've been begging for. What d'you think, you like it?"

"Jennifer, as long as the badge number exists, we exist. If the badge number is destroyed, we're gone too. No matter what happens, you have to protect our family's badge number!"

I leaned against the cabinet holding the portrait, a tangled mess of emotions roiling in my chest.

"Dad, if you were here, you'd believe me, wouldn't you?"

Right then, Javier finished searching the living area and headed straight for my bedroom. I was yanked along after him before I could even process what was happening.

The warm yellow-toned bedroom I'd grown up in was totally stripped bare. Desk, chair, bed, all of it was gone. That total, hollow emptiness sent a cold jolt of panic through me.

Staring at the bedroom that was even smaller and more barren than a cheap single-room rental, the half-healed wound in my chest ripped open all over again. Tiny, sharp barbs of agony sprouted along the ragged edges, each throb a sharp stab I could barely breathe through.

But Javier didn't pause for a second. He strode straight to the wardrobe and popped open a hidden compartment.

Watching his movements, so familiar they felt like a punch to the gut, my heart jolted hard in my chest.

He still remembered.

I'd found that hidden nook myself back when we were together. It was our secret.

At first, I stuffed my old diaries in there, but later, it held all the warm, happy mementos from our relationship.

Javier had even teased me about it once, grinning like an i***t. "So you'll hold onto all our couple mementos, yeah? We'll take them all out again on our wedding day, huh?"

I'd punched him playfully in the arm back then, cheeks burning. "Who says I'm marrying you, i***t!"

The hidden compartment slid out with a soft clink, and my eyes darted towards it before I could think better of it.

It was completely empty.

My heart skipped a whole beat. How? I'd never touched any of that stuff, not once.

Javier stared at the hollow, bare box for a long, heavy minute, then pushed it quietly back into place.

"Captain Morgan, nothing here," he reported.

The whole search turned up zilch, and eventually they all filed out of the house.

As we stepped onto the porch, I couldn't stop myself from glancing back at my mom.

She was still standing in the doorway, craning her neck to watch Javier and the other officers walk away.

For a second, I was hit with a flood of old memories, so many times, she'd stood exactly like that, watching me head off to school, then to work, waving until I was out of sight.

'Was she... missing me?'

For a split second, my throat tightened so much I thought I might cry.

I was just about to climb into the car behind Javier when his phone buzzed.

Bianca's soft, sugary voice drifted out of the speaker. "Javier, I'm at the bridal shop already. When are you coming over?"

Javier hesitated for barely a second before answering, "Be right there."

I stared at the faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and for a split second, my heart turned into a slab of cold, heavy iron, sinking so low in my chest I could barely breathe.

All those old, sweet memories shattered into tiny, jagged shards, each one slicing deep into my chest.

"Jennifer, will you marry me?"

"Jennifer, this is a custom ring I had made just for you."

"Jennifer..."

The man who'd once treated me so well had found a new person to spend his life with.

A thick, suffocating lump clogged my throat, and I could only turn my gaze out the car window, forcing myself to breathe through the tight, burning ache in my chest.

Half an hour later, we pulled up to the bridal shop.

Bianca was inside trying on wedding gowns, chatting casually with Javier, who was waiting outside the fitting room.

"Oh, right, Javier, a friend who works at the bank, told me Jennifer sends a huge sum of money to her mom every single month."

I watched Javier's face harden in an instant, and could only let out a bitter, empty laugh.

I wanted to scream at him, "Javier, that can't be me."

Even if I were still alive, I'd never do something that reckless, never put my mom in that kind of danger. And besides, I was already dead. Dead for good this time.

Just as the fitting room curtain swished open, Javier's phone started ringing.

I stared at Bianca's fiery red silhouette, and a cold, creeping sense of wrongness hit me for the first time.

Why did her build match mine so closely? Wait, she looked way more like the figure in that surveillance footage than I ever did!

Right then, Captain Morgan's voice came through Javier's phone speaker.

"We restored the service number the female corpse was clutching! The number is 293675! It belongs to Jennifer!"