Chapter 8 - The Woman at My Wedding
We checked the wedding photographs.
Eight hundred and forty-three images.
At first, nothing.
Then photograph 611.
Behind the cake table stood a woman in a gray catering uniform.
Mid-sixties.
Silver hair.
Watching me.
Susan started crying.
“Caroline.”
My aunt had attended my wedding.
Nobody invited her.
Another photograph showed her near Margaret.
Another showed her following Ethan upstairs.
Then one showed her holding my veil.
My blood ran cold.
“Why didn't you recognize her?”
Susan hadn’t seen her sister in thirty-one years.
Age changed faces.
Fear changed them more.
But now she was certain.
Caroline had come back.
“Why?”
Nobody knew.
Then Ethan admitted something.
He had seen her.
At 12:52 a.m., while I was downstairs, Caroline approached him.
She called him Daniel.
He assumed she was confused.
Then she said:
“Your mother still doesn’t know which boy she raised.”
That was why Ethan later panicked when the hospital used the same name.
“What did you do?”
“I followed her.”
Where?
Wine room.
Caroline showed Ethan the cedar chest.
She had somehow retrieved it from storage and brought it into the house before the wedding.
That meant Margaret hadn’t brought it.
Ethan hadn’t.
Caroline did.
She wanted Ethan to open it.
He refused.
Then I appeared.
“How?”
“I heard your voices.”
I came downstairs from the sofa.
So my memory was already missing pieces before the hospital.
Caroline showed me the old veil.
I recognized the stitching as mine.
We argued.
Then she told me Susan had named me after her dead daughter.
According to Ethan, I became furious.
Not hysterical.
Furious.
I demanded Susan be called.
Caroline refused.
Then she handed me a small vial.
“What was it?”
“She said it proved Margaret had been lying.”
I apparently reached for it.
Caroline pulled away.
The vial broke.
Glass cut my hand again.
That explained fresh blood on the veil.
But not the sedative in my body.
Then Ethan said:
“You collapsed about ten minutes later.”
Caroline disappeared.
He carried me upstairs.
Margaret found us.
They took me to St. Vincent’s.
Why bring me home before discharge?
Because Ethan received a message from my phone.
While I was unconscious.
The message said:
GET BACK TO THE HOUSE BEFORE 4:00 OR THE WRONG SON DISAPPEARS AGAIN.
Someone had my phone.
Caroline.
Maybe.
Ethan panicked and left with me against medical advice.
Margaret came too.
Back home, they put me on the sofa.
Then why were they in bed together?
Ethan looked ashamed.
“Because Mom thought Caroline would come upstairs.”
Margaret had deliberately taken my place.
A decoy.
She and Ethan waited.
At some point Ethan fell asleep from exhaustion.
Margaret stayed awake.
“And Caroline?”
Margaret whispered:
“She came.”
My heart stopped.
“At what time?”
“5:11.”
“What did she want?”
May you like
Margaret looked at Ethan.
“She wanted her son back.”
