The Bride Sealed Inside the Keepsake

Clara lay beneath the earth only a few hundred yards from where I stood, hidden while the wedding carried on above her.

The thought broke something in me. Tears ran down my face, burning my skin. I needed the police. I needed to get away from that room before Julian came back.

My fingers fumbled over the phone until I found the emergency keypad. I entered 911 and lifted the device to my ear.

Nothing answered.

I pulled it away. The display gave me two blunt messages: the call had failed, and there was no network.

I checked the status symbols along the top. The last 5G bar had vanished. A little icon told me the SIM was no longer connected.

Cold spread through my chest and down my arms.

Julian had taken over my phone account the previous month, when he offered to cover the bill and put me on his family plan. He had the authority to manage every part of it.

Now he had used that authority to silence my phone.

There was no way to reach anyone outside. I was stranded upstairs, trapped in a room with a dress that had belonged to a woman Julian had killed.

“Maya?”

Chloe’s voice came from beyond the bathroom door. The sound jolted me so hard I nearly dropped my phone.

“You’ve been in there ages,” she called. Her tone carried strain, with irritation close behind it. “Evelyn just messaged. The quartet’s begun. We’re about to start.”

Evelyn. Julian’s mother.

I shut my eyes, trying to hold myself together. I couldn’t go near Julian. But perhaps Chloe and Sarah could still be trusted. They had been part of my life for years.

If I showed them Clara’s locket and the report on my screen, they would understand. They would make a scene, smash a window, or help me get past Marcus.

I wiped my cheeks with a towel, then tucked the locket back into the hidden pocket. My left hand stayed clenched around the phone.

I turned the lock and eased open the bathroom door.

Chloe waited on the other side, arms folded over her immaculate pale-blue bridesmaid dress. Behind her, Sarah perched on a velvet chair, glancing anxiously at her watch.

“At last,” Chloe said with a sigh. Her eyes dropped to my gown, and her mouth tightened. “You didn’t even get the mud off. What have you been doing in there?”

“Chloe.” I moved nearer and kept my voice low enough that Sarah wouldn’t catch it. “I need you. There’s something terribly wrong.”

Her eyes rolled, but she followed me into the bathroom and drew the door partway closed, screening us from Sarah.

“If you’re having second thoughts, stop it,” she whispered sharply. The friendly softness fell from her face. “This wedding cost a fortune. You cannot make a spectacle of everyone.”

“This isn’t nerves,” I said, barely able to get the words out.

I raised my phone between us and turned the screen so she could see the old article, its print faded and Clara’s photograph fixed beneath the headline.

“Please, look,” I whispered. “Clara Vance vanished on her wedding day, three years ago, at this church. Julian was meant to marry her. She looks like me, Chloe. And this gown…”

I touched the bare place near my collarbone, where a pearl was missing. “It belonged to her. He dressed me in the clothes of the woman he buried.”

Chloe studied the picture without speaking. Then her gaze shifted to the gap in my neckline.

I stood there waiting for her to recoil. I expected shock, a hand over her mouth, anything that would tell me my best friend understood the danger.

I thought she would seize my arm and get us out of there.

Instead, she let out a long, tired breath.

She reached for my wrist and lowered the phone, as though the sight of it had become inconvenient.

“I warned him,” Chloe said, shaking her head. Her voice held frustration, not fear. “Using that dress again was foolish. I told Julian you’d notice the changes, but he wouldn’t hear it.”

For an instant, I couldn’t breathe. The small room seemed to thicken around me, squeezing my lungs.

I looked at the woman I’d known for eight years: the one who arranged my bachelorette party, the one I believed would protect me.

“What did you just say?” I managed, edging backward until the cold tiles met my spine.

Chloe raised her eyes. There was nothing warm in them. The bright, affectionate friend I knew had disappeared, leaving someone watchful and unfeeling in her place.

“Finding you took time, Maya,” she said quietly. She tipped her head, studying my frightened face. “Do you have any idea how many cafés and bookshops I searched before I found the right height, the right hair, the right bones?”

She continued, calm as if we were discussing a harmless favor. “I spent six months setting up that supposed chance encounter with Julian at the gala.”

My thoughts bucked against her words. I wanted to answer, but my voice and body had both deserted me.

Chloe reached out and straightened the collar of the dead bride’s gown. Her fingertips brushed the spot where the pearl should have been.

“You fit him perfectly,” she murmured. “No close family. Buried in student loans. Hungry for somebody to love you and take care of you. You were meant to be the easy choice.”

She stepped away, looking almost sincerely disappointed in me.

“Why did you have to go digging in the dirt?” she asked.

I had no time to move before she turned, pulled the bathroom door shut, and set the heavy brass bolt in its lock.

My closest friend had helped Julian choose me—and now she had locked us together inside the bathroom.