The Haunted Widow
Copyright © 2026 by OmegaPet-58
Chapter 1: I Need Help!
“Hi, Mom. Can you come, <sniff> I need you!”
“Lacie! What’s wrong? You sound terrible!”
“Sorry, I can’t, not on the phone. It’s an emergency. Can you bring Dad with you?”
“Hang on, Lacie, we’ll be there in an hour, bye.”
Billy, her two-year-old son, looked at her from his high chair. A few Cheerios remained on his tray, but his attention was on his mother. He fussed, not liking the stress in her voice. Lacie picked up Billy, rocked him in her arms, and put him down in his crib, where he dropped off quickly.
Lacie started the coffeemaker. Fifty minutes later, her parents arrived. They must have hurried. Wisely, her parents walked into the house quietly, to avoid disturbing their grandchild.
“What is it?” asked her mother, Danielle.
Lacie crashed into her father’s chest, weeping. Awkwardly, Eddie wrapped his arms around her.
“My husband. He’s gone.”
Her father jumped to the wrong conclusion. “David left you?”
Danielle looked closely. She saw sorrow, not anger, and asked, “Tell us what happened. Is David alright?”
“No,” Lacie cried. “They think he’s dead!” Her knees began to buckle. Her father kept her upright and guided her into a chair.
Lacie told them there was coffee. She was trying to keep her bearings.
“The police were here. Seeing those colored lights flashing outside terrified me. They told me he was missing.”
“Missing?” Danielle asked.
“Yeah. Well, he’d gone overboard on the ferry.”
The coffee seemed to stabilize her, and she explained the circumstances, as relayed by the police officers. David had been called to an off-site business meeting in Nanaimo, a town on the eastern shore of Vancouver Island. He drove to Horseshoe Bay and onto the ferry at 7:23 p.m. for the almost two-hour journey over the Strait of Georgia. Conditions were poor and the departure was nearly cancelled, but the captain chose to get underway regardless.
Lacie stopped. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I’m getting to it.”
She continued, “When the ferry arrived, one car remained unclaimed instead of driving off. That’s when the ship was searched, and about an hour after docking the ferry’s video records were examined, showing a figure going over the rail into the ocean. At those temperatures, without a life jacket, survival time was—at best—thirty minutes. By the time that location was searched, he would have been immersed for at least ninety minutes.”
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