“Congratulations, kid! Your wife’s locked up for ten years—now the apartment’s ours!” Champagne flowed freely as my husband and mother-in-law toasted my arrest…

“Now this is our apartment, kid! Your wife’s got ten years to rot in prison!” My husband and mother-in-law were celebrating my arrest on a false charge, but they didn’t immediately hear the key turn in the lock. The coarse prison uniform still scratched my skin as I stepped through the gates of Women’s Correctional Facility No. 4. The September breeze caught my reddish, overgrown hair, which had lengthened over seven years.

Sarah Johnson adjusted the strap of her bag, filled with meager belongings, and took a deep breath. The air, free of the stale taste of confinement, made her head spin. “Don’t come back, birdie!” shouted Officer Nancy, the only staff member who believed in her innocence.

Sarah nodded without turning back. The parole papers burned a hole in the pocket of the jacket issued from the prison warehouse, a replacement for the one she’d worn when she arrived seven years ago—the one with the fatal tear in the sleeve. “A car’s coming in fifteen minutes, Sarah,” said the social worker, glancing at his watch.

“They’ll take you to the city, then you’re on your own.” Sarah nodded again. Thirty-five years old, and she was starting life from scratch.

Or rather, from minus seven. The world had moved on while she was trapped in a parallel reality where time was measured by lights-out and wake-up calls. Last night, she couldn’t sleep, tossing on the hard bunk, listening to her cellmate’s snores, imagining opening her apartment door, flopping onto the couch, turning on the TV, brewing coffee in her own kitchen. Thoughts of her husband, Michael, brought a strange numbness.

In seven years, not a single visit—just curt letters in the first year, then silence. She didn’t blame him. Who needs a murderer for a wife, even one wrongfully accused? The social service car’s tires kicked up dust on the rural road. Outside, small towns and suburbs flashed by, and finally, her hometown appeared.

It hadn’t changed much, except for more billboards and a new mall where the old movie theater used to be. “Where to?” asked the driver as they entered the city. “Elm Street, number fifteen.” Sarah licked her dry lips. “Home?” “Home?” she echoed, though she wasn’t sure the apartment was still her home.

At the building’s entrance, she stood for a long time, staring at the rundown five-story complex as if seeing it for the first time. Her heart pounded wildly, her feet felt glued to the pavement. What if Michael had changed the locks? What if he wasn’t alone? What if… “To hell with it!” she exhaled and marched toward the entrance. The door code was the same—the last four digits of the building number, reversed. She climbed to the third floor on foot, though the elevator seemed to be working.

She just wanted to delay the moment of facing the unknown. Apartment 37. Their apartment.

Her apartment. Sarah pulled out the keyring, preserved by the investigator along with her other personal items. The big key for the bottom lock, the small one for the top.

Her hands trembled as she aimed for the keyhole. The locks turned easily, as if they’d been waiting for her seven years. Sarah stepped inside her apartment and froze.

The air smelled foreign—a mix of cheap cigarettes and cloying perfume. On the couch, draped in her green robe, sat an unfamiliar woman in her thirties with a sour expression and grown-out dyed roots. “You’re back early,” the stranger snapped, not even standing.

“Ten years they waited, and it’s only been seven.” Something inside Sarah snapped. So, they’d been expecting her.

They knew. They just thought they had three more years to spare. “Parole,” she replied shortly, scanning the familiar walls.

So much had changed. Her floral curtains were replaced with beige blinds. The bookshelf was gone, swapped for a glass stand cluttered with trinkets.

And the couch—the one where she and Michael used to cuddle and watch movies in another life—was now occupied by this bleached intruder. From the kitchen emerged her mother-in-law, Patricia Thompson, in all her glory.

Designer suit, perfect hair, icy stare. She saw Sarah and went pale as a ghost. Without a word, she grabbed her purse and bolted out, nearly knocking Sarah over…