It started with the folder I swore I'd deleted.
Buried in the digital wreckage of my laptop, beneath drafts and ghost files, was a directory titled "Untitled (Final)." I didn't remember naming it. I didn't remember saving it. But the date stamp, three years ago, was the night of the accident.
When I opened it, the air in my apartment shifted. It always does, when the past decides it's ready to breathe again.
Inside were fragments: half-written emails, unsent messages, digital scribbles that looked like something between love letters and confessions.
"You said stories don't end, they just change narrators.""You promised you'd tell them the truth if I didn't wake up."
I recognized Kane's phrasing immediately, his sharp cadence, his flair for melodrama that used to make me laugh. But now the words didn't sound like him. They sounded like me.
I read through dozens of exchanges, and with each one, my stomach tightened. There were drafts of scenes from the manuscript, written before the night he died. Lines that described the exact crash, the shattered glass, even the stretch of road we swerved off.
Only one problem: I never wrote those lines. Not then.
The realization was slow, like cold water crawling down my spine. These weren't fictional fragments. They were memories, preserved in words I had tried to hide from myself.
I found one last file at the bottom of the folder:"For A.K."
It wasn't a letter. It was a transcript.
Recording: 12:43 a.m.Background: laughter, rain, tires screeching.
Kane: "You're driving too fast."Me: "No i am no, you are just drunk."Kane: "Adele Korrin, you're going to get us killed"[Sound: crash, silence, static.]
My breath caught.
No one called me that anymore.Not since my grandmother died.Not since Kane.
He used to whisper it when he wanted to pull me back from my spiraling—"Adele. Look at me." Always soft. Always sure. Like the name itself was an anchor.Seeing it typed out now, black and absolute, felt like hearing it again for the first time since the night he died
Hold on, I didn't remember pressing record. I didn't remember hearing him say my name like that.
By the time the audio ended, I realized I'd been holding my breath for too long.
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was knowing.
The manuscript on my desk flickered to life again, the cursor blinking like an accusing eye. New words appeared without my touch:
"You promised to finish it for me. You just forgot what that meant."
I closed the laptop, but the line burned behind my eyelids.
Forgot what that meant.
Maybe I had.
Because finishing it wasn't just about writing.It was about remembering.
And remembering meant facing the truth.
The haunting wasn't punishment anymore.It was a reminder.
He wasn't trying to destroy me.He was trying to make me confess.