It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
The makeup artist was still patting powder under my eyes when my mother burst into the room with her phone in her hand and panic all over her face.
"Amaka," she said, breathing hard. "Do not come out yet. Wait here."
"What is it?" I asked, standing from the chair. My heart jumped. "Did something happen to Emeka?"
She shook her head but didn't say a word. Just turned and rushed out again, her wrapper nearly falling off her shoulder.
I stood there frozen, still half in my robe, staring at the mirror. My white wedding gown lay on the bed like a ghost. Everything was perfect. Too perfect.
Twenty minutes passed. No one came in. No one called me. I reached for my phone, but there were no missed calls, no messages. Nothing. Just my own reflection looking back at me with growing fear.
I couldn't wait anymore.
I put on the dress with shaky hands, fixed my veil, and stepped out into the corridor. The church was just a few feet away. I could already hear the choir singing softly. The wedding had started without me.
I walked towards the main hall and paused just at the side door, out of sight from the guests. My palms were sweating.
Then I looked up…and my entire world stopped.
There he was. In the back row. Sitting like he belonged there. In a black suit. Quiet. Calm. Watching.
My heart dropped to the floor.
I knew that face.
I knew that smile.
I knew the man sitting there.
He was my husband.
My dead husband.
The same one we buried three years ago. The same one whose body I saw with my own two eyes in a coffin. The same man I had mourned and buried in my heart.
But he was sitting there. Breathing. Alive.
Watching me walk down the aisle… to marry another man.
I blinked.
Once. Twice. I even held my breath, thinking maybe the pressure was playing tricks on me. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. Or what I feared the most.
But he was still there.
Still breathing. Still watching me with those familiar dark eyes. Still the man I married three years ago. The same man whose body was pulled out of a burning car in Port Harcourt. The same man they said was beyond recognition. The same man we buried with sobs and prayers and rain falling on his casket.
I almost fell.
Someone behind me held my arm, whispered something I didn't hear. I couldn't move. Couldn't cry. Couldn't speak.
He did not flinch. He didn't try to hide. He just sat there like a quiet storm, with one leg crossed over the other. Like he came to enjoy the ceremony.
The choir was singing "You Are God from Beginning to the End." How ironic. My whole life was ending and starting again at the same time.
I stepped back slowly, hoping no one had seen me yet. But just then, he stood up.
Tall. Calm. Cold.
Our eyes locked.
He tilted his head slightly. That same look he gave me the night he proposed. That soft smirk. But now it looked dangerous.
I turned and ran.
My heels scraped the tiled floor as I dashed through the corridor like a madwoman. I didn't care that people were staring. I didn't care that my dress tore at the hem. I just ran until I found an empty room and slammed the door shut.
My heart was thumping like a drum. My whole body was shaking.
Was this real?
Was he a ghost?
Or worse… had I married a ghost the first time?
I locked the door behind me and collapsed to the floor. My wedding gown ballooned around me, the fabric brushing the tiles like it was mocking me.
My chest was burning. My throat was dry. My ears were ringing.
Three years.
Three whole years I had spent trying to forget him. Three years I had spent learning to live without him. Crying into my pillow. Screaming into my hands. Waking up in the middle of the night with my fingers clutching a ghost.
I had finally moved on. I had found Emeka. A good man. A man who gave me peace. A man who saw my scars and didn't flinch.
And now this.
I pulled off the veil and threw it across the room. My hands were trembling. My heartbeat had not slowed down. I felt like I had been thrown into another lifetime.
There was a knock at the door.
I froze.
No one was supposed to know I was here.
I held my breath as the knock came again, this time softer.
"Amaka," a voice called gently from the other side.
It was my mother.
I opened the door and her eyes widened when she saw me crouched on the floor in full makeup and no veil.
"Mummy," I said, my voice cracking. "Did you see him too?"
She didn't answer immediately. Her lips parted, then closed. Her eyes watered.
"I saw him," she finally said. "I saw him and I told them to delay your entrance. But you went out before I came back."
I gripped the edge of a table beside me. "How is this possible?"
She stepped in and closed the door behind her.
"I don't know," she said. "But he's not supposed to be alive."
I laughed, the bitter kind that tastes like old pain. "You think I don't know that? I watched them lower his casket into the ground. I stood there. You stood with me."
She sat beside me slowly, hands on her knees. "I don't know if this is a prank. Or a setup. Or witchcraft. But baby, whatever it is, we need to stay calm. You're about to marry Emeka. That man…whatever he is…he's not supposed to be part of your life anymore."
My eyes burned. "Mummy, what if he never died? What if something went wrong and they lied to us?"
She went quiet.
Then she said the one thing that snapped something in me.
"What if he planned this? What if he disappeared… on purpose?"
I stared at her like she had just cursed in a church.
"No," I whispered. "He would never do that. Not Tochi. Not my Tochi."
She looked at me, her face cold and bare.
"Then you better pray this is a ghost, Amaka. Because if it's not, then somebody somewhere has been playing with our lives for three years. And I don't think they're done yet."