Updated Nov 27, 2025 • ~10 min read
The message haunted Poppy all the way back to the city.
Something about the night Rosa died.
What could that mean? The accident report had been straightforward—single vehicle collision, wet roads, poor visibility. Tragic, but explainable. An accident in the worst sense of the word.
So why did this stranger’s message feel like a door opening onto something much darker?
“Are you going to call them back?” Rochelle asked, navigating through traffic as they merged onto the highway.
Poppy stared at her phone. The message had come from a number she didn’t recognize, no name attached. She’d tried to reply, but her text sat undelivered, the message bubble stubbornly refusing to turn blue.
Number not found.
How did someone text from a number that didn’t exist?
“I can’t call back. The number doesn’t work.” Poppy showed Rochelle the failed message.
“That’s weird. Maybe it was a burner phone?”
“Or a spoofed number. Or…” Poppy didn’t know enough about technology to guess. “Whoever sent it didn’t want to be traced.”
“Which is either very suspicious or very smart, depending on what they know.”
Poppy’s mind raced. Someone who’d worked with Rosa wanted to talk. About the night she died. About Dominick.
What if the accident hadn’t been an accident?
No. That was crazy. The kind of thing that happened in movies, not real life. The police had investigated. It had been ruled accidental. There was no conspiracy, no dark secret.
Except Dominick had an entire lake house shrine to his dead girlfriend and had never mentioned her existence to his fiancée. That wasn’t exactly normal behavior either.
“I need to find Rosa’s phone number,” Poppy said suddenly. “Her actual number. Maybe someone’s still paying for the account. Maybe there’s voicemail, or…”
Or what? What did she expect to find?
“How are you going to get it?”
Poppy thought for a moment, then pulled up her email and found the file Sabrina Novak had sent her. The lawyer had been thorough—obituary, news articles, social media archives.
And there, in one of the social media screenshots, was a comment thread from years ago where Rosa had shared her contact information for an art exhibition she was curating.
The phone number was right there, public and accessible, from a time before Rosa knew she had less than a year to live.
Poppy’s hands shook as she added the number to her contacts. Just seeing it there—Rosa Petrov, followed by ten digits—made it feel more real. Like calling the number might somehow conjure the dead.
“Are you actually going to call it?” Rochelle glanced over, her expression worried.
“I don’t know. Maybe. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“The number’s been disconnected and you get a robot voice telling you it’s no longer in service. Or someone else has the number now and you freak out some random stranger. Or—” Rochelle’s voice dropped, “—someone’s kept the account active and you have to listen to her voice on the voicemail.”
That last option made Poppy’s stomach clench. But she’d already read Dominick’s letters, slept in Rosa’s bed, worn her clothes. How much worse could hearing her voice be?
“I’m calling.” The decision felt reckless and necessary in equal measure.
Before she could overthink it, Poppy hit dial.
The phone rang.
Not the quick double-ring of a disconnected number, but an actual, full ring. Once. Twice. Three times.
Poppy held her breath, her heart hammering so loudly she could barely hear anything else.
Four rings.
Then, a click.
“Hi, you’ve reached Rosa! I can’t get to my phone right now, but leave me a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. If this is about the gallery, try me at my office number. Otherwise, make it good—you’ve got thirty seconds!”
The voice was warm, bright, full of life. The voice of a woman who expected to have a future, who thought she’d be calling people back, who had no idea that in a few short months, she’d be gone.
The beep sounded.
Poppy’s throat closed. What was she supposed to say? “Hi, I’m the woman your boyfriend tried to marry while pretending I was you”? “Sorry you’re dead, but I need some answers”?
“I…” Poppy’s voice cracked. “I don’t know if anyone checks these messages. I don’t even know why I’m calling. My name is Poppy Knight, and I… I was engaged to Dominick. Until yesterday. When he said your name at the altar instead of mine.”
Rochelle shot her a look that clearly said What are you doing? But Poppy couldn’t stop.
“I found your lake house. Your clothes. The letters he wrote to you after you died. I found everything, Rosa. And I just…” Tears streamed down Poppy’s face. “I need to know if any of it was real. If he ever saw me, or if I was just your replacement. And I’m so sorry that you’re dead, and I’m sorry that I’m calling your phone like a crazy person, but I don’t know what else to do.”
The thirty seconds ran out. The voicemail system beeped and disconnected.
Poppy lowered the phone, her hands trembling.
“Feel better?” Rochelle asked gently.
“No.” Poppy wiped her eyes. “I feel insane.”
“You’re not insane. You’re processing trauma. There’s a difference.”
Was there? Because Poppy felt like she was losing her mind. Calling a dead woman’s phone. Burning clothes. Running from her own wedding.
None of this was the life she’d imagined for herself.
Her phone buzzed with a notification. For one wild moment, Poppy thought maybe Rosa’s voicemail had somehow responded. But it was just Instagram—another thousand followers, more comments on posts she’d made months ago when she was happy and ignorant and in love with a lie.
“Can I ask you something?” Poppy said, needing to focus on anything other than the sound of Rosa’s voice still echoing in her ears.
“Always.”
“Why didn’t I see it? The signs. There had to have been signs.”
Rochelle was quiet for a long moment, her eyes fixed on the road. “You weren’t looking for them. You were in love. Or you thought you were. And Dominick is… he’s good at presenting exactly what you want to see.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Yeah. But he’s a convincing one.”
Poppy thought back over their relationship, searching for the red flags she’d missed. Dominick never talking about his past relationships in detail. His phone always face-down on tables. The way he’d steer conversations away from certain topics.
And the lake house. God, the lake house. He’d presented it as their special place, but he’d only ever taken her there after dark on the first visit. She hadn’t seen the full extent of Rosa’s presence until morning.
Had he hoped she wouldn’t notice? Or had he wanted her to find those things, to unconsciously absorb Rosa’s style and preferences until Poppy became a better copy?
“I should have asked more questions,” Poppy said. “About his past. About Rosa. About why a successful fifty-two-year-old man was single and available.”
“He told you he was divorced, right?”
“Yeah. Said it was amicable, that they’d grown apart. I assumed that’s why he was single.” Poppy pulled up the file Sabrina had sent and scrolled through. “But his divorce was finalized twelve years ago. He dated Rosa starting eight years ago. Which means…”
“Which means there’s a three-year gap between his divorce and Rosa that’s unaccounted for,” Rochelle finished. “Maybe he was just single?”
“Or maybe there were other women. Other Rosas.”
The thought sent ice through Poppy’s veins. What if she wasn’t the first replacement? What if Dominick had a pattern of finding women who looked like Rosa and trying to recreate what he’d lost?
Poppy’s phone buzzed again. This time, it was a call from another unknown number.
She almost didn’t answer. But after the mysterious text about Rosa’s death, Poppy couldn’t ignore unknown numbers anymore. Not when they might hold answers.
“Hello?”
“Poppy Knight?” A woman’s voice, older, with a careful, professional tone.
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Emmarie Barrow. I’m a grief counselor at Riverside Memorial. I worked with Dominick Langley for about six months after Rosa Petrov’s death.”
Poppy’s grip on the phone tightened. “How did you get my number?”
“Your wedding video went viral. It wasn’t hard to find you. I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion, but I felt I needed to reach out. What Dominick did to you was…” The woman paused, choosing her words carefully. “I’m not surprised. Saddened, but not surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. Client confidentiality and all. But Dominick stopped coming to sessions four years ago, against my recommendation. He refused to process his grief properly. Instead, he…” Another pause. “He told me he’d found a way to keep Rosa alive.”
“By finding someone who looked like her.”
“I didn’t know that’s what he meant at the time. I thought he was speaking metaphorically. About keeping her memory alive through charity work or art donations or something healthy.” Emmarie’s voice dropped. “But after seeing your video, after seeing your face and realizing how much you resemble Rosa… I understood. And I knew I had to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Dominick Langley is not a bad man. But he’s a broken one. And he’s convinced himself that if he can just recreate the circumstances of his relationship with Rosa, he can somehow undo her death. It’s a form of complicated grief that’s morphed into something close to obsession.”
Poppy felt sick. “You’re saying I was part of his… what? His grief delusion?”
“I’m saying you deserve to know the truth. And the truth is that Dominick needs serious professional help before he can have a healthy relationship with anyone. He’s stuck in a loop, trying to resurrect a past that’s gone.” Emmarie sighed. “I’ve been treating trauma and grief for twenty-three years, Ms. Knight. I’ve seen a lot of ways people cope with loss. But I’ve never seen someone refuse to move forward the way Dominick has.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you deserve better than to be someone’s ghost. And because I think Dominick needs a wake-up call. Maybe losing you will finally force him to confront his grief instead of running from it.”
The call ended, leaving Poppy staring at her phone in shock.
“Who was that?” Rochelle asked.
“Dominick’s therapist. Former therapist.” Poppy relayed the conversation, watching her sister’s expression shift from confusion to horror to anger.
“He’s been in grief counseling. He knows what he’s doing is unhealthy. And he did it anyway.”
“Apparently.” Poppy felt numb. Every new piece of information made things worse. Dominick wasn’t just oblivious or mistaken—he was actively choosing this delusion. Choosing to see Rosa instead of Poppy, despite knowing it was wrong.
Her phone buzzed yet again. This time, a text from a number that actually showed a name: Sabrina Novak.
Sabrina: Got some interesting information from my PI. Can we meet tomorrow? 10 AM at my office?
Poppy didn’t hesitate.
Poppy: I’ll be there.
Whatever Sabrina had found, Poppy needed to know. She’d already uncovered so much—the lake house, the letters, the therapist’s warning. What else could there possibly be?
But as Rochelle pulled up outside the hotel, Poppy’s phone lit up with one more message.
From Rosa’s number.
Her blood turned to ice.
That was impossible. She’d just called that number. It was a voicemail. An inactive line maintained for a dead woman’s voice.
Dead people didn’t text back.
With shaking hands, Poppy opened the message.
Rosa’s Number: Stop looking. You don’t want to know what happened. Trust me.
“Rochelle,” Poppy whispered, showing her sister the phone. “Someone just texted me from Rosa’s number.”
Which meant someone had access to Rosa’s phone.
Or someone wanted Poppy to think they did.
Either way, Poppy was being warned.
The question was: by whom? And why?
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