I Just Matched with My Late Wife on Tinder

When Ethan finds himself scrolling through a dating app, he’s confronted with the ghost of his late wife staring back at him. Has someone stolen his wife’s identity, or is there something more mysterious at play? Faced with a haunting reminder of his loss, Ethan has no choice but to swipe right and delve deeper.

I didn’t think that I would be a widower at 35 years old. But here I was, three years after Lily, my wife, had died in a car accident. The years had flown by in a blur of grief and devastation, which resulted in therapy sessions.

Lily and I had met in a library — she was pouring over the science fiction books while scrawling down a list of titles as she went.

“I’m making a list of books I want to read,” she said, as I passed by her, my bag nudging her arm.

“That list will be never-ending,” I said. “I’ve got a few of them.”

“A few?” she chuckled.

“They’re genre-specific lists,” I explained.

After she checked out a few books, we went to the coffee shop across the library, discussing books.

At the end of the afternoon, I had Lily’s number saved into my phone, with the promise of calling her the next day.

Our relationship progressed quickly, and two years into it, we were married.

Lily was spontaneous; she craved adventure and foreign foods. She was everything that I wasn’t — I was safe. And my wife pushed me out of my comfort zone, encouraging me to live life through her eyes.

On the day of the accident, Lily had been exceptionally loud and joyful. She was “on call,” as she put it because her best friend, Maisie, was due to give birth that day.

Once the afternoon rolled around, bringing a storm with it — Maisie had gone into labor.

“Ethan,” she said. “I have to go to the hospital! I have to be there with Maisie. Do you want to come?”

I did want to go; Maisie was another member of our home. She and Lily had been friends since childhood, and they had always been inseparable.

“I wish I could,” I said. “But I have one more meeting to get through. How about I meet you at the hospital after?”

Lily agreed and bounced to the kitchen to make me a toasted cheese sandwich before she left.

“Now, I won’t feel guilty for leaving you before dinner,” she chuckled.

Not even an hour later, I had gotten a call from paramedics. My Lily had met with an accident.

“The visibility would have been compromised,” a police officer said while Lily’s body was loaded. “It’s the storm.”

After that, my life shifted completely. There was no joy. When Lily passed away, she took all the light with her.

But now, three years later, I finally mustered the courage to try online dating, hoping to find some semblance of connection again. Since Lily, I had struggled with meeting new people. The thought of letting people in and having to tell them all about Lily was just something that I didn’t think I could handle.

As I sat there on the couch with the TV on, I swiped through Tinder. And as I was swiping through all the happy faces, I froze.

There she was.

Lily’s beautiful face smiled back at me. It felt like an iron poker through my body.

“What the hell?” I asked the empty lounge.

The account’s name was for someone named Caroline, but the more I looked at her face, the more I saw my wife staring back at me.

Swiping right felt like I was betraying her memory. But I had to know. What was my wife’s photo doing on Tinder? Who had stolen her photos?

To my astonishment, my phone beeped — indicating a match.

Is this some kind of sick joke? Who are you? I typed, my fingers trembling.

A shiver shot down my spine when a reply popped up instantly.

Ethan? Oh my God! Is it really you?

My stomach churned. There was no way that I was talking to my wife. There was no way that this was Lily. I watched as she was lowered into the ground. I visited her grave as often as I could.

So, who was this?

And yet, despite feeling sick to my stomach, something changed. I continued to message the enigma behind my wife’s photos, and she revealed intimate details of my life shared with Lily.

She mentioned our trip to Italy.

Remember when you stole the bottle of wine from the room service cart in the hallway? And all the cheese you ate?

She mentioned the scar on my arm.

That scar is from the time you and Malcolm went surfing, isn’t it?

And the one thing that truly messed with my mind was when she revealed a part of Lily’s wedding vows.

I was torn between disbelief and a haunting sense of Lily’s presence.

For the rest of the night, I texted the mystery person back and forth. The longer we spoke, the more unnerved I became. She knew too much about me, about Lily, about our life together.

Driven by a mix of desperation and the need for answers, I agreed to meet.

The following afternoon, I met Caroline at a café.

Sitting across from her, my heart raced. She was the image of my Lily, except for the way she smiled in person. And her eyes, in person, they told a different story.

“You must be so confused, Ethan,” she said, sipping her coffee.

“Explain it to me,” I said.

“I know that this is unbelievable, Ethan. It’s bizarre to me, too. But I’m not Lily, of course. I’m her twin sister, Caroline. I don’t know if Lily even knew that we were separated at birth. But we were both adopted straight out of the hospital we were born in. Our mother was eighteen at the time, and she couldn’t keep us.”

From what I knew — Lily had no idea that she was adopted. There was absolutely no way she would have kept it from me. If I didn’t know, then Lily didn’t either.

“I don’t think Lily knew I existed,” Caroline said. “She would have tried to find me right?”

I remained silent. I couldn’t answer Caroline — I didn’t know any better.

“I found out that Lily had passed on because I went looking for our birth mother. My adopted parents told me that I was adopted a long time ago. But I only felt the need to look now.”

Caroline went on to tell me about how her parents had given her the adoption paperwork and encouraged her to look for Lily.

“I guess I should have known that I was a twin,” Caroline confessed. “I’ve always felt that a piece of me was missing. Don’t twins have that connection from birth?”

“I believe they do,” I replied.

“And then I found Lily’s blog,” she admitted.

I slapped my palm to my forehead. That’s how Caroline had known all the intimate details of our life. Lily was an editor, but she loved to write for herself, too. So she created a blog — an online diary of sorts.

“Her blog is a treasure trove of stories and thoughts. It’s how I’ve gotten to know her,” Caroline said.

Sitting with Caroline was surreal. She shared other stories from the blog, moments of Lily’s life that resonated with my own memories. I laughed loudly for the first time in a long time.

It felt as though Lily was reaching out, connecting us from beyond.

Caroline and I talked for hours — discovering parallels in our lives that seemed more than mere coincidence.

It was overwhelming, but also comforting. Meeting Caroline felt like a bridge to the part of Lily I thought was lost forever.

As we parted ways, each walking to our cars, I felt a sense of closure that I didn’t realize I needed.

The pain of losing Lily will always be a part of me — she was my partner for years. But Caroline’s presence has opened a new chapter.

I think that now, finally, I’ve begun to heal.

I’ve taken Caroline to Lily’s grave a few times, and we’ve continued to meet, to get to know each other better.

I’m not sure where our friendship will go, but I am grateful that I have a new link to Lily.

What would you have done in my shoes?

Here’s another story for you | Ellen’s world was a picture of domestic bliss with her husband George and their daughter Lily until an ordinary day unveiled a staggering truth hidden within the walls of her own home.