Chapter One

Three hours into clearing out the bridal studio, the plaster statue toppled over.

It smashed against the floor in a burst of white chunks. Workers shouted and jumped back. In the middle of all that debris was a body—dried up like old leather, wrapped in a wedding dress.

The cops showed up and taped everything off.

I hovered above it all, staring down at what was left of me. My body from three years ago.

Allen got there twenty minutes later. My husband. Well, ex-husband now. Allen Wilder, the famous wedding dress designer. Sharp suit, assistant in tow. A cop pulled back part of the sheet.

"Know who this is?"

Allen barely looked. "No."

The detective in charge—older guy—checked his notes. "Mr. Wilder, three years back you filed a missing person report. Your wife, Luna Rivers. Said she ran off with millions worth of client jewelry."

"And?" Allen glanced at his watch. "I've got a ten o'clock."

"Thing is," the detective pointed with his pen, "that wedding dress she's wearing? That's from your 'Moonlight' line—the original. Your big signature piece. Records show only one was ever made. For your wife."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Allen looked back at the mess of fabric and bones. His throat moved, just barely.

"So?"

"Victim's got her hands pressed tight to her chest," the medical examiner called out from where he was crouched down. "Looks like she was holding onto something. Best guess is she died about three years ago. Still working on how."

Allen's face stayed blank, but his right hand made a fist. I remembered that—what he did when he was trying not to feel anything.

"Don't know her." Third time he'd said it, this time looking the detective straight in the eye. "My wife took off with that jewelry—that's what happened. If this is her, just proves she either killed herself because she felt guilty, or her partners did it. Either way, not my problem."

He said "not my problem" a little too fast.

"Take another look," the detective moved to block him. "You sure you don't know her?"

Allen had to look again. At the dress ribbons, all brown now, still wrapped around the finger bones. He'd sewn every one of those by hand. Used to tell me every single sparkle on the Moonlight dress had to be perfect enough for my name.

He stared for a long time.

Long enough that his assistant had to whisper, "Sir? The meeting?"

Allen shut his eyes.

"I don't know her." He turned to his assistant. "We're leaving."

His shoes crunched through the plaster pieces. Didn't slow down once.

I floated over to where he'd been standing, looking down at what was left of me after three years trapped in the dark, three years of screaming with no sound.

The cops kept talking, taking pictures, getting ready to move the body. They couldn't hear me.

But I talked anyway, to Allen walking away.

"You know exactly who I am."

The broken plaster caught the morning light, white as bone.

"You just..."

I reached down toward my corpse's closed fist. There was something inside. Something I'd held onto with the last bit of fight I had left.

"...hate me too much to care."