Emma had waited two weeks to relive her wedding day through the photographer’s lens. But one picture, taken that very morning, turned her happiest memory into the start of a question no one in her family wanted to answer.
Emma had spent ten years mourning her sister, Sophie.
Some grief aged quietly. It did not scream every morning or keep a person on the floor forever. It learned to sit at the breakfast table.
It waited in the mirror during birthdays, holidays, and ordinary Tuesdays when Emma caught a flash of blonde hair on the street and forgot how to breathe.
Sophie had died in a car accident when she was 23.
At least, that’s what everyone believed.
For years, Emma had replayed the phone call in her mind. Her mother’s broken sobs. Her father’s strained voice telling her not to come to the hospital because there was nothing she could do.
The funeral that felt less like goodbye and more like a cruel mistake no one knew how to fix.
Sophie had been the wild one. The one who sang too loudly in the car, borrowed Emma’s sweaters without asking, and left handwritten notes on the fridge just to make people laugh. Emma had been quieter, steadier, always the girl who remembered appointments and brought an extra cardigan.
After Sophie was gone, Emma became even quieter.
Then Nick came into her life.
He did not tell her it was time to move on or that Sophie would want her to be happy, though Emma knew both things were probably true. Instead, he listened.
He learned Sophie’s name not as a tragedy, but as a person. He asked about her favorite songs. He smiled when Emma told him how Sophie once dyed their dog’s tail pink with temporary hair spray.
Little by little, Emma started laughing without feeling guilty.
So when that morning arrived, the morning she married the love of her life during a beautiful garden ceremony, Emma had let herself believe that joy could stand beside loss without betraying it.
The garden was filled with white roses, soft greenery, and rows of wooden chairs tied with satin ribbon. Sunlight fell over the aisle like a blessing. Her dress had a fitted bodice with lace sleeves and a skirt that moved like water when she walked.
Her mother cried before the ceremony even began, pressing a tissue under her eyes so she would not ruin her makeup.
“You look like a dream,” her mother whispered, cupping Emma’s face.
What happened next changed everything… continues on the next page.
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