Chapter 1 - THE LOCKET THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED
The chain snapped between the bride’s fist and the little girl’s throat.
Seven-year-old Lily Carter stumbled backward against the cream-colored hotel wall, one hand flying to the red line beneath her chin. The oval gold locket swung from Caroline Ashford’s trembling fingers.
“You stole this from my mother!”
Caroline’s voice cut through the quiet hallway eleven minutes before her wedding.
Nathan Brooks lunged forward from behind her and caught her wrist.
“Caroline, let her go.”
His black tuxedo sleeve brushed Caroline’s white lace gown as he moved partly between his bride and the terrified flower girl. Lily pressed both hands against her pink shirt, struggling to breathe without crying loudly.
Caroline twisted toward Nathan.
“That locket was buried with my mother.”
“You’re frightening her.”
“She was wearing it around her neck.”
Lily shook her head so quickly her bangs fell across her wet eyes.
“I didn’t steal it. She gave it to me.”
Caroline stopped fighting Nathan’s grip.
The distant string quartet continued playing downstairs. Somewhere beyond the closed hotel doors, two hundred guests were waiting for Caroline to walk down the aisle.
“My mother has been dead eighteen years,” she said.
Lily swallowed.
“The lady said you would say that.”
Nathan slowly released Caroline’s wrist.
The locket hung from its broken chain. Tiny roses had been engraved around its edge, worn smooth in the same places Caroline remembered rubbing with her thumb as a child.
She had watched her mother, Evelyn, wear it every Sunday.
She had been twelve when her father told her Evelyn had died in a car accident outside Richmond. The coffin had remained closed because of the damage. Caroline had spent eighteen years believing the locket was inside it.
Lily pointed toward the clasp.
“She told me you had to open it.”
Caroline pressed the latch.
Inside was an old photograph on the left and a newer photograph hidden behind it.
The older image showed Evelyn at twenty-nine, smiling with Caroline as a toddler in her arms.
The second image showed Evelyn sitting on a park bench. Her dark hair had turned gray. A thin scar crossed her forehead, but the shape of her eyes and the crooked line of her smile were unmistakable.
She was holding a newspaper.
The date was from nine months earlier.
Caroline’s anger vanished so completely that her knees weakened.
Nathan caught her elbow.
Behind the photograph was a folded strip of paper.
Caroline pulled it halfway out.
Three words appeared in blue ink.
Find my daughter.
She recognized the handwriting. Her mother made the capital F with a long descending loop. Caroline had birthday cards stored in a cedar box with the same careful lettering.
“Where did you get this?” she whispered.
Lily looked toward the empty end of the hallway.
“At the bus station near my grandma’s apartment. The lady wore a blue coat and walked with a cane.”
“Was she alone?”
“A man was with her.”
“What man?”
Lily glanced toward the ballroom doors.
“The doctor in the picture by the wedding cake.”
Nathan’s expression changed.
A framed photograph downstairs showed Caroline’s late mother standing beside two men at a charity gala. One was Caroline’s father, Charles Ashford.
The other was Dr. Henry Vale, Charles’s oldest friend and Evelyn’s former physician.
Henry was seated downstairs among the wedding guests.
Caroline carefully closed the locket.
“Did the woman tell you her name?”
Lily nodded.
“Evelyn.”
Caroline stared at the child whose necklace she had just ripped away.
Shame came hard and immediate.
She lowered herself until they were eye level.
“I hurt you.”
Lily touched the mark on her neck.
“Yes.”
“I thought you had taken something from me.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
Caroline could not ask a frightened child to forgive her just because she was a bride or because her world had cracked open. She placed the broken locket in Lily’s palm.
“This belongs with you until you decide to give it back.”
Lily studied her face, then closed Caroline’s fingers around it.
“She wanted you to have it.”
A door opened at the far end of the corridor.
Caroline looked up.
Her father stood beneath a warm ceiling light, dressed in a black tuxedo with a white rose pinned to his lapel.
Charles Ashford smiled as if nothing were wrong.
“They’re waiting for us downstairs,” he said.
May you like
Then his eyes dropped to the locket.
For the first time in Caroline’s life, she saw her father look afraid.
