Beloved by One Who Never Lived

One evening, his name found her in the obituaries.

Ethan Mwendazake, aged 34. Died suddenly. Beloved son, brother, friend.

Something in the photo; the smirk, the lazy confidence in his eyes,  made her stop breathing for a moment. She traced the outline of his jaw with her fingertip, smudging the ink. It felt like touching skin through glass.

That night, she wrote her first letter.

Dear Ethan,
I don’t know you, but I wish I did. I hope your death was soft. I hope someone kissed your forehead before they let you go.

She signed it with lipstick and left it at Lang’ata Cemetery, among fresh graves that still smelled of damp soil and loss.

The next morning, she woke to find a red petal on her nightstand, wet, fragrant, trembling as though freshly plucked.

By the third letter, there were footprints in the corridor outside her apartment. Bare. Dusty. Too heavy to belong to a dream.

Dear Ethan,
I felt you last night. The air moved when I breathed your name. If this is madness, I don’t want to be cured.

She started dressing for him. Red lips. Black silk. No underwear. Each night she sat by the window and whispered his name until her voice rasped into silence. The room grew colder when she did.

By the fifth letter, the petals had become roses, whole, bleeding scent onto her sheets. By the sixth, the roses turned into notes.

You looked beautiful in red last night.

She began to lock her door. Then double lock it. Then stopped sleeping altogether. Still, she’d wake to find the bed indented beside her, as though someone had lain there, face turned toward her throat.

On the seventh night, someone knocked. Three times. Slow. Patient. She opened the door with trembling hands.

No one. Just the day’s newspaper on her doormat.
The obituaries section circled in red.

At the top:

The Woman Who Reads Obituaries; Died Suddenly.

Her photo stared back, lips red, eyes half-closed, as if she’d just exhaled her last.

Beneath it, a single line in neat black type:

Beloved by one who never lived.

The candle flickered.
And from somewhere deep in the corridor, a man’s voice whispered,

“I missed you too.”