Pretend I’m Arresting You, The Police Agent Whispered To Me At The Airport…
The security officer’s words hit me like a punch to the gut in that crowded U.S. international airport. “Ma’am, your husband and son just tried to smuggle illegal items using your luggage.”
My new husband, Richard, didn’t even flinch when they called my name over the airport speaker, but my son Jake’s eyes met his for just a split second, and that look told me everything I needed to know.
Standing alone in that sterile security office, with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and the American flag hanging in the corner, I watched footage of them carefully placing wrapped packages in my suitcase while I was in the hotel shower.
I realized my perfect honeymoon had been the perfect setup. “Where are you watching from today?” I had asked cheerfully on my little travel vlog the day before, standing in front of the departure board.
“Drop your location in the comments below and hit that like and subscribe button.”
Now I was sitting under those same boards in handcuffs, staring at a screen that showed my whole life turning into a nightmare. “Let me take you back,” I said quietly, more to myself than to anyone else, “to how I ended up in the worst nightmare of my fifty‑two‑year‑old life.”
Three months earlier, Richard Callaway had swept into my world like something out of a romance novel.
Tall, silver‑haired, charming as the devil himself.
He’d approached me at my neighborhood coffee shop in northern Virginia with the kind of confidence that usually made me suspicious. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing you’re reading Agatha Christie,” he’d said. “A woman of excellent taste.”
I’d looked up from my book to find the most attractive man I’d seen in years smiling down at me.
I should have trusted my instincts.
I should have wondered why a successful contractor in his fifties was suddenly interested in a widowed school librarian who lived quietly in the suburbs. But after eight years of lonely evenings and empty dinners for one, his attention felt like sunshine after a long winter.
“I’m Richard,” he’d said, extending a perfectly manicured hand. “Mind if I join you?”
Within two weeks, he was bringing me flowers.
Within a month, he was cooking dinner in my kitchen while my son Jake watched from the corner, arms crossed, scowling like a teenager instead of the twenty‑eight‑year‑old man he was.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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