Chapter 3: The Vestry Retreat
I didn't wait for her to formulate another excuse or spin another excuse for the crowd. I turned my back on Rebecca, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from her mother in the front pew, and scooped Lily up into my arms. She buried her face immediately into my shoulder, her small hands clutching the lapel of my tuxedo jacket. I carried her past the whispering rows of guests, ignoring the camera shutters snapping frantically from the aisle, and pushed open the heavy oak side door leading into the vestry.
The vestry was quiet, smelling faintly of old beeswax, polished mahogany, and dying lilies. I locked the heavy wooden door behind us, shutting out the murmurs of the courtyard. Setting Lily down on a faded velvet settee in the corner, I knelt beside her, smoothing her blonde hair away from her damp face.
"You're safe, sweet girl," I murmured, keeping my voice soft and steady. "You did the right thing bringing this to me. I need you to stay here for just a few minutes while I look at it."
Lily nodded, her lower lip trembling slightly, but she didn't cry anymore. She curled her legs up on the settee, wrapping her arms around herself.
I stood up and walked over to the small oak desk beneath the high stained-glass window. The afternoon light cast a fractured blue-and-red pattern across the wood. With deliberate slowness, I smoothed out the crumpled piece of heavy cardstock.
It was a note, scrawled in the sharp, distinct handwriting I had spent the last year trying to forget—the handwriting of Sarah, the woman who had vanished from our lives three years ago, leaving me to raise Lily alone. And resting beneath the note was a small, Polaroid photograph that had been folded inside it. The image showed Sarah standing outside a familiar brownstone apartment building in the city, holding a fresh newspaper dated just three days ago.
My breath caught in my throat. Rebecca had told me—sworn to me—that Sarah was gone for good, that she had signed away her rights and fled the state after taking a large cash settlement from Rebecca’s own family foundation. Rebecca had positioned herself as our savior, stepping into the wreckage of my broken home, offering stability, wealth, and a clean slate.
But this note, written on the very stationery Rebecca kept in her private home office, told a completely different story.
May you like
She isn't gone, the note read in Sarah’s jagged script. She’s paying me to stay away, but the price just went up. Tell your precious bride her secret is still safe with me—for now.
My hands grew cold. Rebecca hadn't rescued us. She had orchestrated our isolation. She had bought Sarah’s silence, and now, somehow, Sarah had reached out directly to my six-year-old daughter to deliver the extortion demand. The glamour, the charities, the pristine wedding—it was all a gilded cage built over a foundation of lies and quiet blackmail.
