Chapter 2: What the Garden Remembered
The older woman didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Just stared at the bride's hand holding the maid's hand like it was something that shouldn't exist.
Then she smiled again.
Slower this time.
"You're emotional.
It's your wedding day.
That's understandable."
"Give me the photograph."
"Darling—"
"Her name." The bride turned to the maid.
"Tell me your name."
The maid's voice came out barely steady.
"Rose."
Something crossed the bride's face.
A memory she couldn't quite reach.
"And your sister.
The one who kept that photo.
What's her name?"
Rose looked at her.
"She called herself Lily.
But that wasn't the name she was born with."
The older woman stepped forward.
"That's enough."
"What was her name at birth?" The bride didn't look away from Rose.
"What was she born as?"
Rose's eyes filled.
"She said her real name was taken from her when she was four.
She said she remembered a garden.
And a girl who used to hold her hand so she wouldn't be scared of the dark."
The bride's grip tightened.
"I used to do that," she whispered.
"For my little sister.
Every night."
Behind them, a chair scraped back.
The groom had stood up.
And across the room, near the main doors, an older man in a gray suit had gone completely still — like someone who had just heard the one thing he had spent twenty years making sure no one would ever say out loud.
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What that man knows — and why the groom's mother tried to destroy that photograph — is darker than anyone in that ballroom could imagine.
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