For a moment, I honestly thought I’d misunderstood him.
“What truth?”
His eyes lowered.
“I should have told you before today.”
“Told me what?”
“I kept waiting.”
My heartbeat began pounding against my ribs.
“Richard.”
His voice cracked.
“I was selfish, Claire. I thought if enough time passed, maybe it wouldn’t matter anymore.”
“What wouldn’t matter?”
He pressed a hand over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
Those two words terrified me more than anything else he had said.
“For what?”
But before he could answer, his knees seemed to give way beneath him.
He slid down against the wall.
Completely drunk.
Barely conscious.
I stood there in my wedding gown, staring at the man I had married only hours earlier.
A hotel employee eventually helped me get him upstairs.
I removed Richard’s shoes, rolled him onto his side, and pulled a blanket over him.
Then I sat beside the bed.
My wedding dress still covered the floor like spilled ivory silk.
I should have been sleeping beside my new husband.
Instead, I opened my leather notebook.
My hand shook as I wrote six words.
If you knew the truth about me.
I stared at the sentence for a long time.
Then I closed the notebook.
I didn’t sleep at all.
Part 3 — The Necklace
Dawn crept through the curtains in thin gray strips.
Richard was still asleep.
I began gathering our belongings because I needed something to do with my hands.
My shoes were beneath the chair.
My veil was draped over the dresser.
His tuxedo jacket had been tossed across the back of an armchair.
I picked it up.
Something inside the jacket shifted.
Not paper.
Something heavier.
I slid my hand into the inner pocket.
My fingertips touched metal.
A thin gold chain slipped into my palm.
And the moment I saw the pendant hanging from it, the room seemed to disappear around me.
“No…”
My mother’s necklace.
It was a small oval pendant, delicate and slightly scratched near one edge.
My mother had worn it for years before giving it to me.
I knew that because I had photographs of her wearing it.
And according to my hospital records, I had been wearing it the night of my accident.
It had disappeared after the crash.
The police had assumed it had been lost somewhere near the wreckage.
I had accepted that explanation.
