But the guilt had kept building quietly in the months that followed. She woke at three in the morning, convinced she was doing something wrong; that moving forward meant leaving Daniel behind; that the wedding dress hanging in her wardrobe was some kind of message that she was finished grieving, finished remembering, finished…
Three months before the wedding, a letter had arrived from an organization she didn’t immediately recognize. She opened it, read it twice, and placed it face-down on the kitchen table. She told herself it was administrative, impersonal, nothing that needed urgent attention. She never mentioned it to Richard or Claire, but she still hadn’t thrown it away.