Chapter 3 - The Groom Who Was Supposed to Be Guilty
Daniel locked the doors.
Jonathan backed toward the truck.
Rebecca ran faster.
Her bare feet struck wet asphalt without hesitation.
Her face remained terrifyingly calm.
Daniel expected her to attack Jonathan.
Instead she passed him.
Straight to Daniel’s passenger window.
Her hand struck the glass.
Once.
Then she pointed toward Jonathan’s truck.
Daniel looked.
Something moved inside the cab.
Jonathan saw it too.
His grief vanished.
“Get down!”
The truck windshield exploded outward.
Not supernaturally.
A heavy metal object came through from inside.
Jonathan dropped.
Daniel ducked.
A figure climbed from the passenger side and disappeared into the woods before Daniel could see a face.
Human.
Rebecca had been warning them.
Not threatening Jonathan.
Her throat gesture had meant danger.
Someone intended to kill him.
Another misread signal.
Daniel jumped from the car despite every instinct telling him not to.
Jonathan was bleeding lightly from shattered glass but conscious.
“Who was inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s your truck.”
“It was.”
“You said turn around.”
“Because this road is being watched.”
“By whom?”
Jonathan stared at Rebecca.
She stood ten feet away.
Daniel turned toward her.
“Rebecca?”
Her gaze moved to Jonathan.
For twenty-eight years, Jonathan had imagined this moment.
Daniel could see it.
The questions.
The rage.
The impossible hope.
Jonathan whispered:
“Why did you leave?”
Rebecca’s face remained still.
Then she shook her head.
Once.
Jonathan broke.
“You didn’t?”
Another shake.
Daniel looked between them.
The accepted story was that Rebecca abandoned her car and vanished.
Maybe even ran from her marriage.
Rebecca was denying it.
Jonathan stepped closer.
“Did someone take you?”
Rebecca nodded.
Daniel’s skin tightened.
“Who?”
Her eyes moved toward him.
Not Jonathan.
Daniel.
She touched her chest.
Then pointed at Daniel again.
The same gesture.
Jonathan noticed.
“What is she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
Jonathan did.
Or thought he did.
“Your father.”
Daniel turned.
“What about him?”
“Michael was with Rebecca before she disappeared.”
There it was.
A fact that could condemn.
Jonathan explained that shortly after the reception, Rebecca left in her car.
Michael followed.
Jonathan believed they had been having an affair.
Police found evidence supporting it.
Letters.
Hotel receipts.
A photograph of Michael and Rebecca embracing.
Daniel’s stomach sank.
“My father told you that?”
“No. He denied everything.”
Of course.
Another suspicious denial.
Then Jonathan added:
“I was wrong.”
Daniel looked at him.
Jonathan had discovered years later that the hotel receipts were connected to Rebecca’s sister, not Rebecca.
The letters contained affectionate language because Michael and Rebecca had grown up together like siblings.
The embrace photograph was taken at Rebecca’s mother’s funeral.
Real evidence.
False context.
Exactly the kind of trap Daniel had almost fallen into minutes earlier.
“Why did someone want you to think they were having an affair?”
Jonathan looked ashamed.
“Because I was jealous enough to do the rest myself.”
He had fought with Rebecca.
Accused her.
Followed her onto Blackthorn Road.
She fled.
Jonathan’s truck broke down near the bridge.
By the time he reached Rebecca’s abandoned car, she was gone.
“I spent twenty years believing my jealousy drove her away.”
Rebecca stared at him.
Then slowly shook her head.
Jonathan began crying harder.
She was absolving him of the disappearance.
Not of the cruelty that preceded it.
That distinction mattered.
Daniel asked what Michael saw.
Jonathan did not know.
Michael returned home after sunrise covered in mud.
He told police he had searched the woods and found nothing.
Two weeks later he moved his family away.
He never returned.
Daniel remembered his father refusing rainy roads.
Perhaps fear, not superstition.
Rebecca approached Daniel.
This time he did not retreat.
She reached toward his hand.
Her skin looked solid.
Cold droplets clung to it.
Before she touched him, Jonathan shouted:
“Don’t!”
Rebecca stopped.
Jonathan looked terrified.
“Every person she touches starts seeing things.”
Daniel frowned.
“You’ve seen her before?”
Jonathan hesitated.
Then nodded.
“Six times.”
Daniel stared.
Jonathan had seen Rebecca periodically since 1998.
Always on rainy evenings.
Always running beside vehicles.
Always appearing twenty-five.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I did.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
Michael had returned to Blackthorn Road repeatedly.
He and Jonathan investigated together for years.
Until one night Michael discovered something that made him stop.
“What?”
Jonathan looked toward Rebecca.
“He said she wasn’t Rebecca.”
Daniel stared at the bride.
She did not react.
Jonathan continued:
“Your father said Rebecca died on her wedding night.”
Rain whispered around them.
Daniel looked at the woman standing ten feet away.
“Then who is she?”
Jonathan’s voice trembled.
“Michael called her the Witness.”
Rebecca suddenly looked toward the woods.
A faint light flickered between the trees.
She panicked.
The same terror Daniel had seen before.
She pointed toward his car.
Go.
Daniel and Jonathan climbed in.
Rebecca remained outside.
“Come with us!”
She shook her head.
“Why?”
Her lips moved.
For the first time since “Shhh,” she spoke.
“If I get inside, it gets inside.”
Daniel stared.
“What gets inside?”
Rebecca looked past him.
A second face appeared in the rearview mirror.
Sitting in Daniel’s back seat.
His father.
Michael Mercer had been dead for sixteen years.
May you like
He leaned forward and whispered:
“Don’t listen to her.”
