My boyfriend’s mom kept calling me Lily.It started subtly. The first time, at Sunday dinner, when she passed me the potatoes and said, “Here you go, Lily dear.” I just smiled, a little confused, and my boyfriend nudged me under the table, mouthing, “She means you.” I laughed it off. Just a senior moment, I thought. A common name, an easy mistake.
But it wasn’t a one-off. Every single visit, it was Lily. “What do you think, Lily?” “More pie, Lily?” My own name, the one I’d carried my whole life, vanished from her vocabulary whenever I was around. My boyfriend would just chuckle, “Oh, Mom, you know who this is,” but he never corrected her directly. He’d just make eye contact with me, a little shrug, as if to say, “What can you do?”
What I could do, apparently, was shrink a little more with each utterance of that name. It started to feel like a slow, insistent erasure. I wasn’t just being called the wrong name; I was being called someone else. The polite smiles became forced. My stomach would tighten every time I heard her voice. I started dreading Sundays.
A man in the hospital | Source: Midjourney
Why this name? Why Lily? I’d catch myself staring at her, trying to find a clue. Was it her sister’s name? A long-lost pet? My boyfriend, seeing my growing discomfort, would insist, “She’s just forgetful, honey. It means nothing. Don’t let it bother you.” But it did bother me. It gnawed at me. I started to feel like a placeholder. A stand-in.
One afternoon, while my boyfriend was in the shower, I was helping his mom put away some old photo albums in the attic. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light filtering through the tiny window. She pointed to a faded picture, a young couple laughing on a swing set. “That’s him,” she said, her voice soft, “and that’s Lily.”
My blood ran cold. The woman in the photo was stunning. Long, dark hair, an infectious smile, eyes that sparkled with life. She had a strikingly familiar quality. A sudden, horrible thought bloomed in my chest. No. It can’t be. My hands trembled as I carefully picked up the photo. “Who… who is Lily?” I managed to ask, my voice barely a whisper.
A couple holding hands | Source: Unsplash
His mom looked at me, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes – sorrow? Confusion? – before it was replaced by her usual placid smile. “Oh, you know, just a friend from back then.” She patted my arm. “Now, where were we putting these?” She moved on, but I stayed rooted, staring at the photo. The woman in the picture. Her smile. Her eyes.
I kept that picture. I tucked it into my purse, a burning secret. Later that night, my boyfriend was on the couch, scrolling through his phone. “Can we talk?” I asked, my voice tight. He looked up, sensing the shift in my tone. I pulled out the photo and laid it on his lap. “Who is this?”
His face went utterly, completely blank. The blood drained from it. He stared at the picture, then at me. His jaw clenched. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. A long, agonizing silence stretched between us.
An emotional man’s eyes | Source: Unsplash
Finally, he spoke, his voice hoarse. “That’s… that’s Lily.”
“I know,” I said, my voice rising. “His mom calls me Lily. EVERY TIME. Tell me, who is Lily?” My heart was pounding, a frantic drum against my ribs. I knew, somehow, this wasn’t just an old friend.
He rubbed his temples. “She was my fiancée,” he confessed, the words ripped from him. “She died, ten years ago. An accident.” My breath caught in my throat. TEN YEARS AGO. HIS FIANCÉE. The pieces clicked into place, grotesque and chilling. His mom wasn’t just forgetful. She was seeing Lily in me. But why?
“And,” he continued, his eyes finally meeting mine, full of a strange desperation, a raw admission, “you look just like her. Exactly like her.”
An angry young man | Source: Midjourney
My world tilted. The air left my lungs. My mind raced, flashing through every compliment he’d ever given me about my hair, my smile, my eyes. Every time he’d looked at me with that intense, wistful gaze. He sought me out. He chose me because I was her mirror image. I was a ghost, walking around in someone else’s shadow. A replacement. A stand-in.
Then came the final, gut-wrenching blow. He reached for my hand, his voice pleading, broken. “When Mom started getting confused, calling you Lily… I didn’t correct her. I even… I even told her it was okay. I told her it helped her. And for me… it helped me too.”
MY GOD. He hadn’t just allowed it; HE ENCOURAGED IT. He actively participated in my erasure, using me to fill a void. He wanted me to be her, for his mother, and for himself. I wasn’t just being called the wrong name. I was being the wrong person. I was living her life, wearing her face, loving a man who wasn’t loving me, but a memory.
A man walking away | Source: Midjourney
I looked down at the photo of Lily, then at my own hands, my own body, suddenly foreign. Who am I? All this time, I thought I was building a future with someone. But I was just a living, breathing echo from his past. I was never truly seen. I was never truly loved. I was just Lily’s ghost.
