Chapter 2 - THE SILVER POCKET WATCH
The ballroom went deathly quiet.
The only sound was the faint hum of the microphone amplifier and the distant rustle of the May wind against the inn’s tall glass windows. Two hundred guests—our family, our friends, the people who had held me up when the world collapsed—sat frozen in their gilded chairs.
Wyatt stepped down from the head table, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles fluttered beneath his skin. He didn’t look like a groom. He looked like a man who had just caught a thief in his house.
“Harper,” Wyatt repeated, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying register that I had never, in five years, heard him use. “Give me the microphone. Now.”
He reached for my five-year-old daughter.
Before I could even think, my body reacted. I stepped sharply between them, the heavy ivory silk of my wedding dress swishing loudly across the polished hardwood floor. I placed my hands on Harper’s small, trembling shoulders and pulled her flush against my legs.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I said, my voice shaking but loud enough to carry.
Wyatt stopped. He immediately softened his eyes, raising his hands in a gesture of peaceful surrender. The mask slipped perfectly back into place.
“I’m sorry, Emma,” he breathed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. He looked out at the sea of guests, offering a strained, apologetic smile. “She’s just overwhelmed. It’s a big day. Kids get confused.”
He reached out to touch my arm. “Let’s just get her sitting back down, okay? The band is about to play our song.”
I looked at the man I had almost married. The man who had held me while I wept over my husband’s casket. I looked at his handsome, concerned face, and for the first time, I felt a deep, chilling instinct prickle at the back of my neck.
I looked down at my daughter.
Harper wasn’t looking at the crowd. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring dead at Wyatt, her small chest heaving, her knuckles white as she gripped something tightly in her left hand.
“I’m not confused,” Harper said, her voice piercing the heavy silence.
She opened her small fist.
Resting in her palm was a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch.
My breath caught in my throat. The room spun.
It was Nolan’s watch. An antique Elgin with a scratched casing that he carried in his left breast pocket every single day. The police had told me it was lost in the wreckage of the scaffolding collapse. They said it must have slipped out and been buried in the rubble.
“Where did you get that?” I whispered, dropping to my knees so I was eye-level with her.
Harper’s bottom lip quivered, but she didn’t cry. She possessed her father’s stubborn bravery.
“I found it in his truck,” Harper pointed a tiny, accusatory finger directly at Wyatt. “Under the seat. When he was driving us to the rehearsal dinner yesterday.”
Wyatt’s face lost all its color.
“She’s making things up,” Wyatt said quickly. Too quickly. He stepped forward, his hand shooting out to grab the watch from her palm. “She stole that from one of my groomsmen. Give it here, Harper.”
He grabbed her wrist. Hard.
Harper let out a sharp cry of pain.
“Let go of her!” I screamed, shoving Wyatt’s chest with both of my hands.
He stumbled backward, shock flashing across his face.
The guests erupted into chaotic murmurs. My mother was suddenly standing. Wyatt’s groomsmen were looking at each other in confusion.
I didn’t care about any of them. I grabbed the silver pocket watch from Harper’s hand.
I turned it over.
There, etched into the back of the tarnished silver, were the initials N.T.C.—Nolan Thomas Carter. My husband.
“You told me they couldn’t find this,” I said, my voice barely more than a ragged gasp as I looked up at Wyatt. “You said you personally helped the police sift through the rubble for three days and you couldn’t find it.”
“Emma, please,” Wyatt begged, stepping toward me with his palms up. “I found it a week later. I was going to give it to you today. As a wedding gift. A surprise. To honor Nolan.”
It was a lie. I could see the panic vibrating behind his eyes.
“You kept my dead husband’s watch hidden under your truck seat for two years?” I asked, the sheer absurdity of the lie breaking whatever spell this man had cast over me.
I stood up, grabbing Harper’s hand tightly in mine.
“The wedding is off,” I said loudly, my voice ringing clear through the ballroom.
I didn’t wait for the fallout. I didn’t wait for Wyatt’s excuses or the frantic questions from the guests. I hiked up the heavy silk of my skirt, held my daughter’s hand, and walked out of the ballroom.
We burst through the front doors of the inn into the humid South Carolina air. I practically threw us into my car, locking the doors just as Wyatt burst out onto the front porch, shouting my name.
I put the car in drive and sped down the gravel driveway, my wedding dress bunched up around my waist, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
We drove in silence for ten minutes until the inn was miles behind us.
I pulled over on the shoulder of a quiet country road, beneath a canopy of weeping willows. I turned the engine off. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely put the car in park.
I turned around to look at Harper in the backseat.
She was staring down at her lap, picking at the tulle of her pink flower-girl dress.
“Harper,” I said gently, trying to keep the terror out of my voice. “Why did you say Wyatt was the reason Daddy never came home? Did you just mean because of the watch?”
Harper slowly shook her head. She looked up at me, her blue eyes—Nolan’s eyes—wide and fearful.
“He caught me looking at the watch yesterday,” Harper whispered, her voice trembling. “He got really mad. He squeezed my arm and said I had to keep quiet.”
A cold sweat broke out on my neck. “Keep quiet about what, baby?”
May you like
Harper pulled her knees to her chest.
“He said if I told you about the woman in the black jacket,” my five-year-old daughter whispered into the quiet car, “you would go away forever. Just like Daddy.”
