A Wedding for the Dead

Chapter 1

I’d been married forty-five years, and for forty-five years I’d gone with my husband, Richard Dawson, to the family memorials at the cemetery.

This time I only got carsick, and he ordered me out of the car.

So I started up the hill in the rain.

In that downpour I finally saw the photo and the name on the headstone.

All this time, the person I’d honored for forty-five years was his first love.

The wind cut like ice, and the sounds around me went muffled.

Night pooled like ink, and the soles of my old canvas shoes felt as if they were splitting.

“Richard,” I called, then realized calling wouldn’t help.

The long walk drained me, and shouting had shredded my voice.

On top of that came his ultimatum, the kind only a “husband” like him would make.

It all boxed me in.

I still didn’t understand how I had ended up like this.

David had always wondered why Richard insisted on coming to this cemetery every year.

At dawn I got up early, cooked breakfast for everyone, and wrapped the memorial offerings one by one in plastic.

I wasn’t tired.

Years of hard work had trained my body for that pace.

But the jolts along the mountain road made me dizzy, and I couldn’t make sense of him.

David finally asked about it.

Richard snapped, “You don’t know a thing, shut up.”

Everyone knew he had a temper, and David tried to smooth it over with a nervous smile.

What happened next, right, Lily went pale, just like me.

Panicking, I fished an orange from my bag and pressed it into her hand.

She had taken only a few bites when Richard told me to get out.

Linda and David pleaded, but he wouldn’t let me back in.

I thought I heard Lily crying.

Richard was seventy, yet his word was still law in that house.

With one sentence he left me there, and no one dared push back.

I heard Linda say my leg couldn’t handle the cold, but Richard didn’t budge.

Thinking of it made the chill bite deeper into my bad leg.

Stumbling forward, I remembered how it got hurt.

Back when he’d just started his career, hotheaded as a kid, he tried to fight a client over design demands.

The man nitpicked and complained, sure, maddening.

But that wasn’t how you handle it. I stepped in when the guy brought muscle, talked them down, and got them to leave him alone.

It ended, but we both got hurt.

He was a young man then, and within days he was bringing me meals and flowers.

My leg never truly healed. I had taken the worst blow for him.

He once promised he’d walk the road for me for the rest of our lives.

Somewhere along the way he turned into someone else.

People say love settles into kinship with time. Was that it, though? My gut said no.

Maybe it started when he stopped racing me to the sink and left me to the kitchen all day.

From the daisy he used to press into my hand every time we met, to skipping every holiday, even forgetting my birthday.

It had all shifted without me noticing.

Still, didn’t he care about our years together? How could he dump a seventy-year-old woman on the roadside so easily.

The sky kept darkening, and my heart went with it.

The drizzle thickened into real rain, and the trees couldn’t shield me.

I was soaked through.

I walked on, dazed, until I saw a flicker of fire ahead.

People move toward warmth without thinking, and I drifted toward the flames.

---

Chapter 2

Blisters were blooming on my feet, hot and raw, yet I barely felt the pain.

Only when I reached the fire did feeling creep back in.

Flames licked in front of the grave, piles of paper offerings smoldering.

One stack died down, the next caught and flared.

No wonder the fire kept burning.

The downpour had passed, a fine mist still hanging in the air.

In the paper money I saw dresses, cars, houses. Someone must have loved her deeply.

Without thinking, I lifted my head and looked through the wavering light at the photo and name on the stone.

That face, that name, hit me like a bolt.

Beloved Wife Emily Carter.

I stared at the line until my throat felt packed with cotton.

I forced myself to say the words out loud.

I knew I wasn’t mistaken. In his sleep Richard had called that name. His first love.

I took in the design of the headstone. My chest went hollow, as if the air had been sucked out.

We had been married half a lifetime, and this design was his handiwork.

It was the same as the drawings I had seen on his desk.

The clean edge of the stone made the mud on my clothes look even worse.

In that moment I understood.

Why he had stopped telling me he loved me.

I truly understood.

My foot caught on something and I pitched forward.

My knees hit the ground, a sharp spike of pain.

I landed hard.

At eye level sat a line of round oranges.

They hadn’t tripped me.

A beam of light glowed near the ground. I reached out and found a small square device, a smartwatch.

Lily must have slipped it to me without my noticing.

I aimed the light at the photo. In the flicker and shadow the young woman seemed to smile at me.

The offerings lay in the corner, the same ones I prepared by hand every year.

The sight sent me running.

I checked every grave I passed, reading every name.

When I reached the last one, I knew.

There wasn’t a single headstone with the Dawson name.

Lily’s watch had Richard’s number saved.

My fingers shook over the buttons and tears finally spilled.

As if the watch had heard me, it started to ring.

I answered and said nothing.

“Hi, Mom, where are you, are you okay?”

It was Linda, urgent and breathless.

I rasped a few words.

“Thank God the watch is with you, Mom. I thought Lily had lost it, that thing’s pricey.”

Then David’s breath rushed across the line.

“Okay, Linda, that was on me.”

“Mom, Dad’s already asleep. We’re coming to get you, just stay put.”

David hurried on, then his voice stumbled. “Right, Mom. He’s stubborn. And you, why poke the bear…”

I didn’t hear the rest.

Before the call even ended, darkness closed in.

It struck me that the storms of my life had been whipped up by the very person who was supposed to shelter me from the rain.

---

Chapter 3

When I opened my eyes again, daylight filled the room.

A hard knock at the door jolted me fully awake.

I got up, aching all over, and looked down. The big cuts had been wrapped tight with bandages.

The small ones were neatly covered too, the bows a little crooked.

I shuffled to the door and found Richard staring, clearly annoyed.

He spotted the bandages and took a guilty step back.

“What time do you think it is. Why didn’t you make breakfast.”

“It’s fine, I ordered takeout. Breakfast’s here, come downstairs and eat.”

A woman’s voice, one I didn’t know.

I looked over the railing, nearly lost my balance, and Lily caught my arm just in time.

She touched the bow on my bandage and studied my face with worry.

Warmth rose in my chest, then other feelings drowned it out.

The woman’s face was the image of Emily Carter, even about the same age as in the photo.

Richard’s tone had softened when he spoke to me, then his face hardened again.

“Since you recognized her, I won’t do much introduction. This is Sophia Carter, my first love’s daughter.”

David walked to Sophia’s side and tore into a paper bag of pastries without asking.

“Margaret, don’t just stand there. Yesterday you fainted in front of her mother’s grave.”

Richard frowned. “You must have scared Emily yesterday. That’s why she sent Sophia here. From now on she’s part of this family.”

I should have sensed something was off long ago.

He said I couldn’t enter the family chapel since I wasn’t born a Dawson, and even David wasn’t allowed. Old family rules, he claimed.

What kind of rule is that.

I believed it for forty-five years.

When I first saw him today, I should have asked what ancestors he was honoring. Now he wanted me to accept his first love’s child as family like it was nothing.

How could I.

David, who had been indifferent, changed his tune.

“Dad, you can’t put it that way. I respect Emily, but Sophia should be here only if Margaret agrees.”

He was worried about the will, afraid money would slip away. Whether I agreed or not hardly mattered.

Sure enough Richard cut it off. “Enough. That’s settled.”

“Margaret, stop spinning stories. Emily helped me for years. I have a duty to look after her daughter.”

Another person in the house, yet I didn’t cook or clean like before.

Richard and I slid into a cold war.

With Sophia’s help he started using the washing machine.

When I tried to use it he called me wasteful.

If David and Linda saw me busy, he sneered that I was born to be a workhorse.

Then I found the washer running all night when I went to the bathroom.

They ate out most days.

Sometimes Sophia ordered takeout for Richard, called it being thoughtful.

She would glance at me, all surprise, and say she forgot to add mine.

After it happened a few times, I kept my distance.

When I finally caught Richard alone, I stopped him in the hall.

“So. Had your fun.”

His voice dripped pride and superiority.

I looked at the uneven dye in his hair and sighed. “Let’s separate.”

---

Chapter 4

Saying it felt like letting stale air out of my lungs. The heaviness in my chest lifted at once.

He shot back “No way” on instinct.

I thought he would rant or make a scene, but he didn’t.

His eyes shifted with a mix of things, then he left without another word.

I opened the closet to pack and couldn’t find my favorite floral dress.

Back then I was the prettiest literature teacher on campus. Plenty of men tried their luck with bad poetry, and I chose a stiff from a design studio.

Later, to support David and Richard, I quit and became a homemaker.

From then on David learned he couldn’t get pocket money from me anymore, so he poured his charm on Richard. It paid off.

A knock came. I opened the door and there stood Sophia.

“Who said you could touch my things.”

My voice cracked like a whip.

She wore a sleeveless dress. The cut was new, but I knew the fabric at a glance.

“Oh, what are you talking about, I don’t understand.”

Her mouth said confusion, her eyes said spite. Even that innocent face looked twisted.

“The dress on your back is lotus silk that went out of production forty-two years ago. There isn’t another bolt like it.”

My voice went calm. I wanted to hear her explanation.

Sophia gave a smug smile. “So it’s that valuable. I thought the style looked dated. Since the sleeves are already cut, I’ll turn it into sleepwear. Just passable.”

Anger rushed up and filled my chest.

I slapped her. She even angled the other cheek toward me.

I swung again, a sharp crack rang out, yet there was no second mark on her face. I ended up on the floor, hand to my own cheek, head tilted to the side.

Richard had just come back. He looked at Sophia with aching tenderness, the anger still on his face.

Sophia’s eyes held only grievance. She’d gone pale, the kind of look that tugs at sympathy.

“You deserved it. You think you’re fit to wear my dress.”

Sophia flinched and hid behind Richard.

He soothed her in a gentle voice, though she still shot me a taunting glance.

“Margaret, really. It’s just an old dress. Don’t be so petty.”

David didn’t help me up. He left me on the floor. “Sophia collaborates with Aurelia. Do you even know how big Aurelia is. Forget it, you wouldn’t get it.”

Linda told Lily to come to me, then stomped on David’s foot. He finally shut up.

“Enough, Margaret. I paid for that dress back then. I owe Emily years of guilt. At your age, pulling a stunt like this is shameful.”

I met his eyes. “Then divorce me. I won’t swallow this anymore.”

I turned and walked out.

I took only my ID and the documents. Nothing else.

Richard’s harsh words, Sophia’s whimpers, Linda’s pleas, David’s noise all fell behind me.

There was nothing here worth staying for.

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