I looked down at the box, at the neat brown paper wrapping, at the shape beneath it too flat to be harmless and too deliberate to be random.
Then I saw the small square of navy fabric tucked under the twine.
And I knew, before I even bent to pick it up, exactly which ghost had finally found its way home.
Part 10
The package held my dress.
Folded with surprising care. Dry-cleaned. Pressed. Slid into tissue paper as if that could make the history come out of it.
The crystals still caught light when I lifted it from the box. Tiny blue-white sparks flashed across the foyer wall and disappeared. For one disorienting second I was back in the cathedral, watching another woman glow in my place while my father lay dead in front of us.
My hands started shaking.
There was a note tucked into the tissue.
I’m sorry.
—B.
That was it. No explanation. No plea. No performance. Just the bare minimum of an apology from a woman who had learned, a little too late, the difference between being chosen and being used.
I stood there in the quiet foyer with the dress over my arm and realized I didn’t want it back.