“On our honeymoon, I woke up in the middle of the night to find my husband lying on his back, clutching a small wooden box like it was a treasure. He said it contained the ashes of his deceased ex-girlfriend. When he went to take a shower, I opened it… and what I found inside made me pack my bags and ask for a divorce before dawn…”

The moon barely illuminated the room of the small hotel on the Portuguese coast where we were spending our honeymoon. I was fast asleep, exhausted from the previous day, when a slight movement in the bed woke me. I opened my eyes, confused, and it took me a few seconds to understand what I saw: my husband was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his back to me, holding a small wooden box in his hands. He was caressing it with such intimate tenderness that I felt an immediate, almost childlike, pang of jealousy.

At first, I thought perhaps he was keeping a memento there that he wanted to show me, something emotional he’d brought for the occasion. But then I heard him murmur a name he hadn’t mentioned since we’d been married: “Lucía…”
My heart skipped a beat. Lucía was his ex-girlfriend, the one who had died in an accident four years earlier. I knew her death had affected him deeply, and it had never bothered me that he still cared for her, but seeing him there, in the middle of the night, clutching that box as if it were a living treasure… something inside me tensed.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice still heavy with sleep.
He jumped, almost dropping the box. He looked at me like a child caught in a forbidden act.
“Nothing, love. I was just… just thinking.” He quickly hid it under his pillow, as if he hadn’t seen me.

I sat up.
“What’s in the box?”
She took too long to answer.
“It’s… Lucia’s ashes.”

I felt an icy knot in my stomach.
“Did you bring them on our honeymoon?
” “She always wanted to come to Portugal…” she murmured, avoiding my eyes.

The conversation ended because he got up, saying he needed a shower. I stayed in bed, motionless. My husband wasn’t lying to me, but he wasn’t telling me the whole truth either. I could tell from his voice, from the tension in his shoulders. There was something more.

Curiosity—or perhaps the instinct for emotional survival—compelled me to search for the box. It was exactly where I had hidden it. It was light, lighter than I expected. I hesitated for a few seconds. I knew that opening it could hurt me, but I also knew that I couldn’t bear to keep imagining what was inside.

I opened it.

There were no ashes.
No human remains.
There was only a gold pendant with the name “Lucía,” several carefully folded letters… and a recent photograph. A photograph that made no sense. Because the woman in that image—smiling, alive, posing in front of a mirror—was the same Lucía who had supposedly died.

And there, on a note written in her perfect handwriting, was a phrase that took my breath away:
“See you when she falls asleep.”

I felt my hands tremble. The wave of betrayal hit me so hard that I knew, without thinking, that my marriage was over. At six in the morning, with my suitcase packed, I told him I wanted a divorce.

But the worst part, the truly devastating part, I discovered later…

I left the hotel without looking back, but the image in the photo never left my mind for a second. I spent the entire morning sitting in a nearby café, trying to control the trembling of my hands. How could someone he claimed was dead be alive? Why did he have recent photos? Why were they meeting, apparently in secret? And what did that unsettling phrase mean?

I decided to do something that initially seemed absurd: search for Lucía’s name on social media. For years I’d never bothered, because I trusted him. But in less than ten minutes I found a profile that matched the image in the photo. Recent posts. Active stories. Locations. Life.

I was frozen. Not only was she alive, but she had photos from that same week.
I didn’t know whether to cry, scream, or laugh at the absurdity.

Finally, after several hours, he called me. I didn’t answer. He sent me more than twenty messages, each one more desperate than the last. “We can talk,” “It’s a misunderstanding,” “I can explain.”
When I finally dared to read them, none of them mentioned the box, or Lucía alive. It was as if he were trying to avoid the issue.

It was that avoidance that made me make a decision. If he wouldn’t tell me the truth, I had to find it myself. I sent him a single message:
“Why did you lie to me about his death?”

It took him less than a minute to call me.
This time I answered.
His voice sounded tired, defeated.

“I didn’t want to lose you,” were the first words he said.
“Then explain. Why did you say she was dead?”
There was a silence that pierced my soul.
“No… I didn’t want to talk about her with you. I thought it was for the best.”
“Are you telling me you made up her death?”
“No… not exactly.” He hesitated. “The relationship ended… badly. She left. She cut off all contact. I didn’t hear from her for years. I wanted to believe it was as if she had died.”

I didn’t believe him. It was too easy, too convenient.

“And the photo? The letters? The note?
” “I shouldn’t have brought any of that.” She took a deep breath. “But I needed to close that chapter. I thought… bringing the box would help me say goodbye to her.
” “Say goodbye to someone you only see ‘when I’m asleep’?” I asked, barely containing my anger.

He remained silent. His silence said it all.

Then I added:
“She’s in Portugal. She uploaded a photo from Porto two days ago.”

I heard him slump in his chair.
“It wasn’t on purpose. I swear I didn’t… I just… needed to see her. Needed to talk to her. I didn’t know how to tell you I still had unfinished business.”

The sentence that followed was the one that killed me:
“She wrote to me first.”

I felt like everything inside me was breaking. My marriage had lasted ten days. Ten days before I discovered he was still secretly in contact with the woman he supposedly “loved but had lost.”

I hung up on him. And that same afternoon, I decided to go talk to the only person who could clear everything up: Lucía.

Finding her wasn’t difficult. Her profile showed an art café near the Douro River, where she used to work as an illustrator. I went unannounced. I needed to see her reaction to seeing me, I needed to understand if she was also part of the lie or if she had been just another victim of my husband.

When I found her, she was sitting in front of her graphics tablet, drawing with enormous headphones on. She looked exactly like the photo: dark hair, a warm gaze, a calm smile. There was nothing ghostly or tragic about her.

I approached slowly.
“Lucía?”
She looked up. Her expression shifted from bewilderment to polite caution.
“Yes… have we met?”
“I’m Daniel’s wife.” I didn’t add “soon-to-be ex-wife,” though I thought about it.

The first thing she did was take off her headphones.
“Oh…” she murmured, surprised but not afraid. “I wasn’t expecting… this.”

We remained silent for a few seconds.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
She nodded and we gestured to a more secluded table.

I didn’t hesitate to confront her directly.
“Why does he have recent photos of you? Letters? And why do you write things like ‘I’ll see you when she falls asleep’?”

Lucia’s expression changed. She was no longer calm. Now she looked… sad.
“Before I say anything,” she whispered, “I want you to understand that I didn’t mean to involve you in this.”
“Involve me in what?”

She sighed, like someone preparing for the inevitable.
“Daniel contacted me first.”

I froze.
“What do you mean he contacted you? He told me you wrote to him.”
She shook her head.
“No. He wrote to me about six months ago. He said he needed to ‘heal wounds,’ that he wanted to apologize for how things had ended. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but… it was a harmless message. I agreed to talk.”

I swallowed.
“And the letters?
” He insisted he wanted to write by hand, that way he could organize his thoughts. He sent me one every few weeks. I never replied that way, but he kept sending them.

I felt a bitter mix of shame and suppressed fury.
“And the note… the one that said, ‘I’ll see you when she falls asleep’?”
Lucía lowered her gaze.
“He came here. We talked one afternoon. He told me you were wonderful, that he loved you… but also that he was afraid of getting married carrying the guilt of the past. He said he needed a moment alone with me to cleanse that part of his life. I accepted it because I thought it was a legitimate closure.”

She looked me in the eyes, with genuine compassion.
“You weren’t aware… were you?”

I shook my head slowly.
“Did you sleep together?” I asked bluntly.
Her eyes widened.
“No! Of course not. If I’d tried anything, I would have run away. I swear.”

I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t. What was truly painful was realizing that he had used her too, inventing a different version of our relationship to justify his obsession.

“And the photo?
” He asked me for one. He said he needed to “remember what he was closing.” I thought it was strange, but I agreed.

At that moment I understood something: there weren’t two victims. There were three of us.

Lucia looked at me with deep sadness.
“You deserve someone who doesn’t need to say goodbye to another woman every time he puts you to sleep.”

I left the cafe with a broken heart, but with a newfound clarity.

I didn’t want explanations. I didn’t want apologies.

I wanted to get my life back.

And that’s how my marriage ended: not because of a ghost from the past, but because of the painful reality of a man who never knew how to heal his own wounds without reopening those of others.”