The Face At The Window

The dead man was unpacking boxes in the apartment across the street.

Élise Vasseur's fingers went still on the candlewick. Ten years. Ten years of lighting this flame at her window for Marc, for the husband she'd buried in name only — because there was no body. Only ash. Only a fireman's report that said *unidentifiable remains*.

And now, across Rue Cendrée, a man with Marc's face set a cardboard box onto a wooden table as if he'd always lived there.

She didn't scream. Grief taught you how to watch. She stood at her window, the unlit candle in her hand, and catalogued every detail. The tilt of his head when he read a label. The way his shoulders moved when he laughed at something on his phone.

The scar on his left hand where Marc had never had a scar.

The next morning, Madame Renard was waiting for her on the stairs. Her voice was a razor wrapped in velvet.

"I saw him too," the old woman said. "And I'll tell you what I told the police ten years ago — I saw a man slip out of that fire untouched."

Élise had heard this before. She'd filed it under an old woman's imagination.

Then the stranger introduced himself. Anton Moreau. Antiques dealer. He stood on her doorstep with a bottle of wine and an apology about the moving noise. His smile was Marc's smile. His voice was Marc's voice — but lower, careful, rehearsed.

"I couldn't help but notice," he said, "you light a candle every night."

Élise's heart stopped for one beautiful, terrible second. "I have insomnia," she said. "The light helps."

He didn't believe her. And worse — she didn't want him to believe her. Because the part of her that had mourned for a decade was clawing its way up from the grave, and it wanted to know what it felt like to look into that face again. To touch it.

Madame Renard watched from her doorway as he left. Something sharp in her eyes understood exactly what was happening.

"Be careful, Élise," she said. "That man isn't your husband."

Élise smiled, and the danger of it bloomed warm in her chest. "No," she said softly. "But I need him to tell me who he is."

She lit