My Husband Came Home With Someone Else Inside

On our wedding night, my husband asked me a question. That question was the highest alert the two of us had. He asked it like a joke. He had no idea what he was saying.

My boyfriend spent three years in deep cover in Central America, and he came home alive. Our wedding night. We were in the middle of it when he stopped and said: "Hey.

What kind of rabbit walks on three legs?" My heart quit. That riddle was our signal, mine and Rhys's. Rabbit means danger. The number after it means how bad.

A threelegged rabbit is the highest alert there is. Chapter 1 Something went off in my head like a shell.

A second later I pushed it down and let my breathing go slow and uneven again. "Seriously? Brain teasers.

Right now." Rhys lifted his head off my neck and bit at it. "Somebody asked it while I was working the room. Nobody could get it.

Figured my wife's smart enough to nail it in one." I did. I knew it cold. Because that riddle doesn't have an answer.

Three years ago, when they sent him under in Central America and nobody could promise he'd come back, I said, the night before he left: "Let's make one.

A signal only we know." "Threelegged rabbit means danger, because nothing reacts to danger faster than a rabbit." "Three, because a rabbit always digs three ways out.

Three legs is the worst it gets." "That way, if you're in trouble, I'll know." He didn't laugh at me for it. He held out his finger for a pinky swear, like it mattered. "Fine.

Then I'll be waiting on my wife to come get me." The Rhys in front of me had never heard of it. Three years. Was that really long enough to lose it?

His face, his voice, even the order he did things in. All of it was exactly the same. The doubt would not sit down. I caught his hand before it got where it was going.

I made myself look embarrassed. "Wait. Rhys.

I think I just started my period." "That fast." Something moved behind his eyes. "When we picked the date, didn't we plan around it?" I put guilt on my face. "Work's been insane.

I pulled allnighters for a week straight to get the leave approved. My whole system's off." He took my face in both hands, worried about me. "Nothing at work is worth your body.

Idiot. From now on I'm watching you." There was nothing in his eyes but concern, and something in my chest let go. Maybe I was the problem.

Three years on the edge of dying every day. Forgetting one stupid inside joke is not a crime. He came back with a heating pad and a mug of ginger tea he'd made me himself. "Drink.

Warm you up." I took it sweetly, and on the first sip my stomach dropped through the floor. There was honey in it. I'm severely allergic to honey.

In college I got the wrong boba once, the one they'd sweetened with it, and broke out head to toe on the spot. Rhys was the one who drove me to the ER at two in the morning.

There is no way he doesn't know. No. Something is wrong. That man is not Rhys. I lay there staring at a black ceiling with my heart going.

We'd done the wedding at the old house in Hollow Creek.

Rhys lost his parents young and got raised on whatever the neighbors could spare, and going table to table tonight he'd named every relative and neighbor right, down to remembering that his uncle Ray tore up his leg working the field and can't have ginger.

Halfway through, a beggar came to the door.

Half blind in one eye, missing pieces of both hands and both feet, dragging himself across the ground toward us, making a sound in his throat that never turned into a word.

The men swore at him and ran him off. I thought he was just some lunatic. How can there be two of the same person in the world? The fear got into every vein I had.

Was he hypnotized? Turned? No. Not Rhys. Rhys would never sell anyone out. He worked earthquake rescue once. He ran toward the things everyone else ran from.

They don't hand the worst assignments to anybody else. I rolled over quietly and opened his account. He keeps to himself, so there's almost nothing on it.

The newest one was three days old. I opened it. And that was when I understood that I had spent an entire night asleep next to a stranger. Chapter 2 He'd posted an old photo of us.

Flowers in our hands, in front of the gates of our university, looking at each other. He captioned it: my girl. Let's do this until we both go gray.

For a man about to get married, that's about as normal as it gets. The comments under it were all congratulations. Then something pulled at me. No. We had an agreement.

His work meant no public face, and Rhys was religious about it. "I've made enemies, Birdie.

You need to be careful too." I took a selfie once that caught half his profile, and he made me delete every copy. I actually got angry. "I waited three years.

Three years where I couldn't tell a single person where you were. You skipped every party, you never met my friends.

People think I made you up!" "That compound in Central America is gone, Rhys.

Can you please relax?" He wouldn't move on it. "The people down there are worse than anything you're picturing. There are always ones that get through the net.

Don't hate me for it, Birdie. Careful is the only reason I'm alive." I bit down on my lip and kept scrolling.

Two weeks ago he'd gone back to the village to fix up the old house for the wedding. On April 26 he posted the freshly painted front door, and a page out of a philosophy textbook.

That book was mine. I left it there the summer of junior year, the first time he took me home with him. So why post that? Why that page.

And then I remembered that summer, when Rhys got it in his head to teach me ciphers. He liked writing them on my palm and making me find the pattern. I'm ticklish.

I'd laugh until I had to hide against his chest. "Rhys. Is this a lesson or is this just an excuse? Are you actually teaching me anything?" His face went dead serious.

He wrote three numbers on my palm again. "Numbers map to letters. Use what I told you.

Solve it yourself." I worked at it forever and then blurted, "I… I love you?" The second it was out I knew I'd walked into it, and I hit him for it.

Rhys laughed until his whole chest shook, and his eyes were full of how much he'd enjoyed that. "Correct. It says I love you.

Congratulations, Rosalind, you've learned something." It came back clearer and clearer. My heart went like a drum. I blew that page up as far as it would go. Line by line.

Compare, break apart, reassemble. Hold on, Rhys. I'm coming. The way he'd taught me.

Pull the first character of every block, shift the second block back one, the third block two, and keep going down the line. And out of all that text, I got two lines.

THE RABBIT HAS HUMAN EYES TRUST NO ONE, ME INCLUDED Every drop of blood in me went solid. Rabbit means danger. So Rhys already knew something was wrong. Why not tell me?

Was he keeping me out of it? Why would a rabbit have human eyes? I chewed on those two lines over and over. Rhys, what are you trying to tell me? Who did I sleep next to last night?

Too many thoughts, all of them slamming into each other. I went outside to breathe. And stopped dead. Because across from the old house, somebody had set up a little general store.

Easter was long over, and Mr. Deel still had a faded, halfshredded Easter bunny poster stuck to the side of his shelving.

Where the rabbit's eyes should have been, some kid had scribbled in a pair of human ones. That was the rabbit with human eyes.

Chapter 3 I forced everything back down and made it sound like small talk. "Mr. Deel.

Rhys must have been in your hair the whole time he was fixing up that house." He waved me off, laughing. "Listen to you.

That Rhys kid's the one looking after me." "He pays attention, that boy. My eyes aren't good, and people were walking off without paying.

He's the one who told me to set up right here, and said anybody stiffs me, come find him." "Oh, and he put a camera in for me.

So now if somebody tries it, I know exactly who." My heart moved up a gear. A camera? So the rabbit with human eyes meant two things.

The other one was the camera. "Could I take a look?" I watched that screen with my hands closed and both palms soaked. April 26. The same day as the post.

On the footage, Rhys goes in fast, and doesn't come out for half an hour, and when he does he's carrying his bag. I sat straight up. It had rained that morning.

Going in, his boots were caked with mud. Coming out, they were clean. Not a mark on them. Rage came in behind the fear and got into every vein I had, and I went cold all over.

The Rhys who walked out of that house was not Rhys. Somewhere in that half hour, they swapped him. My head was full of noise.

If the one who came out is fake, then where is the real one? Rhys is exspecial forces and years deep in cover. How does anybody put him down easily? What happened in there?

I made the call right then, to his handler. I gave him all of it, and he did not react the way I expected. "Ms. Boyd.

You're telling me the Rhys who came home is an impostor." He sounded like he was reading something else. "Because he forgot a joke you two made three years ago.

And forgot you don't eat honey." I lost my patience. "I need you to believe me. I don't know how they did it. That man is not Rhys." "Do you have proof?

Something real." My throat went dry. "I… no." He sighed. "Do you have any idea what these three years did to him?" My chest pulled tight. "He says it's classified.

He never tells me anything." "He ran highrisk assignments back to back. More than once he came out with half his blood left. The only thing that carried him through was you.

We put him under light hypnosis and walled off the worst of it, so he could have a normal life after." Then his voice changed. "And for the record, we ran identity verification.

There is no possibility he was replaced." My eyes went hot, and I didn't move an inch. "If I'm what carried him through, then our memories are not the painful part.

He wouldn't lose those." "I can tell it isn't him precisely because I love him. I'm sending you the footage.

Watch it and you'll see." There was a pause on the line, and then he agreed. I watched the upload bar crawl. At ninetyeight percent it froze.

I moved to find a better spot, and a voice came from behind me with no warning at all. "That's not going anywhere." Everything in me ran backward. Every hair on my arms came up.

I turned around like a door on a bad hinge. Rhys stood there with one hand in his pocket, watching me, calm.

No way to know how long he'd been there. "Birdie, the mudslide took out the cell tower. We'll have no service for fortyeight hours." There was nothing wrong with his voice.

It was gentle the whole way through. "Which is perfect.

We get a honeymoon nobody can interrupt." Chapter 4 "That's about as happy as it gets, isn't it?" The fear came in like water through a break