The morning of my son’s wedding, I stood in my bedroom staring at a navy blue dress I’d picked out three months ago—the kind of elegant, understated garment a mother wears when she’s proud, when she’s ready to watch her child start a new chapter. I should have been crying happy tears, calling friends to say “Can you believe my Blake is getting married?” Instead, I stood with my hand pressed against my chest, feeling my heartbeat thud too fast, too loud, irregular in a way that had nothing to do with my age and everything to do with instinct screaming that something was wrong. I couldn’t name it.
Couldn’t articulate what felt off about this wedding, this woman, this perfect fairy tale my son had been living for two years. But the feeling sat in my stomach like a stone—heavy, cold, unwelcome—and it had been there since the engagement party six months ago when Natasha Quinn had stood in our living room accepting congratulations with a smile that seemed just slightly too practiced. Bernard would have known what to do.
My husband had been gone for three years, but I still caught myself thinking that way, wishing he were here, wishing I could turn to him and say, “Do you feel it too? This wrongness?” But Bernard wasn’t here. And Blake, my sweet, trusting Blake who’d been so lost after his father’s death, was downstairs getting ready to marry a woman who said all the right things but whose eyes always seemed to be calculating something just beyond the conversation.
I was fastening my second earring when I heard gravel crunch outside—Frederick’s car, twenty minutes early. Frederick Palmer had worked for our family for fifteen years. He’d driven Bernard to his last meeting before the heart attack.
He’d driven me to the hospital the night Bernard died. Frederick didn’t panic, didn’t show up early without reason, didn’t do anything without purpose. When I stepped outside into the warm spring morning, Frederick stood beside the black sedan with his jaw clenched tight and fear flickering in his eyes—an expression I’d never seen on his face in all our years together.
“Mrs. Hayes,” he said, voice low and urgent. “You need to get in the car right now.
You need to hide.”
I froze halfway down the driveway. “What are you talking about?”
“Please.” He stepped closer, and I saw his hands were shaking. “I made a promise to Mr.
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