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Five minutes before I was supposed to marry Charles, the coordinator pulled me aside. “Your daughter is waiting by the back entrance,” she whispered. “She says she needs to speak to you alone—without Charles.” My knees nearly gave out. My only daughter, Emily, had died a year ago.
Five minutes before I was supposed to marry Charles, my wedding coordinator told me my dead daughter was waiting for me near the back entrance.
I stared at her so long that she repeated herself.
“Ma’am? Your daughter wants to speak to you.”
My fingers tightened around my bouquet.
My dead daughter was waiting for me near the back entrance.
Emily’s picture was tucked between the white roses, small enough that only I could see it unless I pointed it out.
She was laughing in the photograph, her head tilted back, sunlight across her face.
She had been twenty-one when the picture was taken.
She died at twenty-two.
Emily’s picture was tucked between the white roses.
A year later, I was standing in a bridal suite wearing the dress she had once helped me choose, while a stranger told me Emily was somewhere down the hall.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
Rachel swallowed. “I know this sounds strange.”
“My daughter died.”
“That’s impossible,”
Her eyes widened.
“Oh. I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice came out sharper than I meant. “I buried her.”
Rachel’s face softened.
“I’m sorry, I made assumptions, but there’s a young woman here who looks like you. She knew your name. She knew Charles’s name. She knew you were getting married today, and she specifically said she needed to speak to you before the ceremony.”
“I buried her.”
I could hear the music through the walls.
The string quartet had started.
The guests were probably taking their seats.
Charles was waiting.
My heart was beating hard enough to hurt.
“What did she say her name was?”
Charles was waiting.
Rachel shook her head.
“She wouldn’t tell me. She just said she had to see you, and it had to be private.”
“Private?”
“Without Charles.”
For one terrible second, my mind went somewhere I didn’t want it to go.
“She had to see you, and it had to be private.”
Was there some secret about Charles that Emily had carried into the hospital and never found the strength to tell me?
Charles had been the person who kept me alive after Emily died.
He handled the funeral home because I couldn’t say the words “burial” or “casket” without vomiting.
He answered calls from relatives.
Was there some secret about Charles?
He filled my refrigerator.
He sat on the floor outside the bathroom while I cried behind the locked door.
Months later, when I told him I couldn’t imagine getting married anymore, he hadn’t argued.
He only held my hand.
“Emily loved you,” he had said. “She would want her mother to be happy again.”
At the time, I had almost hated him for saying it.
“She would want her mother to be happy again.”
He couldn’t know what Emily wanted.
Not anymore.
***
I looked at Rachel.
“Take me to her.”
The hallway seemed much longer than it had ten minutes earlier.
My heels clicked against the wood floor. My bouquet shook in my hand.
“Take me to her.”
Rachel led me toward the back of the old inn, past a storage room and a narrow corridor that ended near the service entrance.
“She’s in there,” she said, pointing to a small sitting room.
Then we heard someone crying.
Not loud crying.
The kind someone tries to hide.
“She’s in there,”
My stomach dropped.
For half a second, I was back in the hospital.
I was standing beside Emily’s bed while machines beeped around us and her skin burned beneath my hand.
“Mom,” she had whispered.
“I’m here.”
For half a second, I was back in the hospital.
“I love you.”
That was one of the last clear things she ever said to me.
I grabbed the door handle.
Rachel touched my arm. “Do you want me to come in?”
“No.”
I opened the door.
I grabbed the door handle.
A young woman stood by the window with both hands pressed over her mouth.
She had dark blond hair almost the same shade Emily’s had been.
She was thin and pale, probably twenty-two or twenty-three.
When she looked at me, something in her eyes hit me so hard that I screamed.
She jumped.
A young woman stood by the window
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
I stumbled backward against the door.
For one insane, disorienting second, she looked enough like Emily that my mind stopped working.
But then the moment passed.