Chapter 1 - The Morning After
At 5:53 on the morning after my wedding, I walked into the bedroom expecting to find my husband asleep.
Instead, I found his mother in my place.
Margaret lay beneath our white sheets beside Ethan, close enough that for several horrifying seconds my mind refused to process what I was seeing.
Then I noticed the stain.
Dark reddish-brown.
Near the center of the mattress.
Something inside me exploded.
“GET OUT OF MY BED!”
I crossed the room, grabbed Margaret by the hair, and yanked her upright.
She barely resisted.
That should have warned me.
Margaret was not embarrassed.
She wasn’t frightened.
She simply looked at me with that unnervingly calm expression she had worn throughout the wedding.
Ethan jolted upright.
“Claire!”
I tore the covers away.
“What happened here?”
Margaret smiled.
“Last night? I slept wonderfully.”
“Claire, stop.”
Ethan caught my wrist.
His hand trembled violently.
That was when I saw the plastic band around it.
A hospital wristband.
Patient:
ETHAN HARPER.
Admission time:
2:41 A.M.
My anger faltered.
“You went to a hospital?”
He immediately pulled his sleeve down.
“It’s nothing.”
Margaret looked at him.
Then at me.
“You really don’t remember?”
I froze.
“Remember what?”
“Mom, shut up.”
Ethan’s voice cracked.
I had never heard fear like that from him.
Margaret pointed toward the stained sheet.
“You should ask yourself why that blood is there.”
My stomach tightened.
Then I noticed fabric beneath Ethan’s pillow.
I pulled it free.
A torn piece of white lace.
My wedding veil.
I recognized the hand-stitched edge immediately because my mother had sewn it herself.
There were dark stains on it.
Blood.
My blood.
I knew because there was still a tiny piece of dried medical tape stuck to the lace.
The same tape I remembered a bridesmaid placing over a cut on my palm after I broke a champagne flute during the reception.
But I had removed my veil before midnight.
I had left it downstairs in the bridal dressing room.
“How did this get here?”
Neither answered.
“What happened to me?”
Margaret’s smile faded.
Ethan began crying.
Not guilty tears.
Terrified ones.
Margaret leaned closer.
“Ask your husband what he carried downstairs.”
THUD.
All three of us froze.
The sound came from beneath the bedroom floor.
THUD.
I stared at Ethan.
“Who is downstairs?”
His face drained of color.
“It’s not who.”
A pause.
“It’s what.”
Then something heavy crashed directly beneath us.
Ethan whispered one word.
“Claire…”
“What?”
May you like
His eyes filled with tears.
“You already opened it once.”
