I only went to the wedding to sit in the back, clap on beat, and sneak a cupcake when no one watched. It was supposed to be simple. A quiet Saturday, a small-town church, my best friend marrying the guy who made her laugh until she snorted.
Then the bride lifted her veil—and I saw my face.
I know how that sounds. Delusional. Dramatic. But rewind ten minutes with me.
The church in Willow Creek looks like every church you’ve ever seen in a snow globe. White clapboard. Bell tower. Stained glass that turns morning light into confetti. The parking lot smelled like cut grass and gasoline; the organ inside was warming up, soft and sleepy. I handed Mrs. Patterson—our town’s unofficial event sheriff—a basket of programs and tried to look useful.
“Emma, breathe,” she said, pinning a corsage on me with military precision. “You look like you’re about to testify in court.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. My hands were not fine. They were little earthquakes.
Maybe it was the text I’d gotten on the drive over: You shouldn’t be here. No number, no name, just those five words sitting in my screen like a shard of ice. I told myself it was a prank. I told myself I was being ridiculous. I told myself lots of helpful things while I parked crooked and almost took out a shrub.
“Where’s Milo?” asked Dawson, the groomsman with too-white teeth.
“Next door with Mrs. Kern,” I said. “He sheds on velvet.” Milo is my golden mutt and my best decision this year. I kissed his head before I left home and told him I’d be back by noon. He blinked like a person and leaned into my knees. Leaving him felt like leaving the only thing in my life that makes consistent sense.
Someone tapped the mic near the altar. The squeal ricocheted off the ceiling beams. Guests drifted in—teachers, mail carriers, our pharmacist in a suit that didn’t know him. The pews creaked like old ships receiving cargo.
I took my spot on the aisle. I wasn’t a bridesmaid; Lily had gone minimal—no color-coded friends, just a simple ceremony and cupcakes with lemon frosting. “I want easy,” she’d said when she picked the dress. “I want to feel like me.”
That’s what I kept thinking as we waited—the feeling-like-me part. Because lately I didn’t. My face had been strange to me in mirrors. Familiar, but from a half-second later than I expected. Like the glass was buffering.
The organ swelled. People stood.
Down the aisle came Ben, clean-shaven and pale like he’d been starched. The pastor followed. Then, the doors at the back of the church swung open and the bride stepped in, lace from head to toe, veil clouding her like a secret.
I smiled because that’s what you do when the bride appears—you beam like a lighthouse and aim your heart at the future. My smile felt stapled on.
She walked slowly. The veil was classic, fingertip length, almost vintage. She carried a bouquet of white peonies tied with a ribbon I recognized. We’d picked that ribbon together one sleepy Tuesday at the craft store, arguing about satin versus silk while a shopper in pajamas bought fifty glue sticks.
A weird little wind slid under the church door and touched the hem of her dress. The lace trembled. She paused, breathed, continued. Her steps were measured—heel, toe; heel, toe—like someone practicing not to fall.
My phone buzzed again in my clutch, tapping like a heartbeat. I didn’t look.
By the time she reached the front, my mouth was dry and I’d chewed a crescent into my lip. She stood beside Ben, both of them facing the pastor, both of them tall and quiet and gold-overlaid by window light.
The pastor spoke. I heard none of it. I was staring at the veil.
Because the way she held herself, the tilt of her head, the bend of her fingers around the bouquet, it was all… familiar. Not in a we-grew-up-together way. In a muscle-memory, lived-this-before way. Like watching a rerun of a show I didn’t remember filming.
The pastor invited everyone to sit. The taffeta rustle evaporated into stillness. He smiled the smile he always smiles—gentle, practiced. “Before we begin,” he said, “our bride asked to say a few words.”
The bride turned. Her chin lifted. Her hands lowered.
The veil began to rise.
When I’m nervous, my brain picks the least helpful thing to notice. The tiny details. The edge of the lace catching on a sequin. The dust in the sunlight. The cough that someone tried to swallow behind me, turning into a squeak. The weight of my clutch on my thigh, too heavy for lipstick and keys.
Up went the veil, slow as a curtain lifted by a distracted stagehand. The peonies brushed her bodice and left petals like crumbs.
I should have been thinking about Lily. About how beautiful she’d promised she’d feel. About the fact that this moment—the one we rehearsed with bad coffee and Pinterest boards—was her favorite day since she was ten and married a Ken doll to a potato.
But the thing my brain did was simple: it ran face-recognition on the shape beneath the lace. The cheekbones. The mouth. The small scar near the right eyebrow from when I fell off a bike at twelve and said I’d never ride again.
I knew those parts. I knew them like I knew my handwriting.
She lifted the veil higher.
My phone buzzed again. The clutch quivered. Don’t look. Not yet. I didn’t know why I thought that, only that my gut said it like a command.
The veil cleared her eyes.
They were my eyes.
You know when you catch your reflection walking past a store window and for a split second you don’t recognize yourself? Multiply that by a hundred. Stack that on the day you found out Santa wasn’t real and the day you realized your first love would not even text you back. Pack all of that into one inhale.
Her eyes met mine. And she smiled—my smile, the one I hate in photos because it’s crooked on one side. The smile that says I know something you don’t even when I don’t know anything at all.
“Good morning,” she said into the mic. Her voice was mine, too. A little lower. A little steadier. Like it had been coached through a storm.
Ben didn’t flinch. The pastor didn’t flinch. No one seemed confused. I was the only one gripping the pew so hard the varnish printed on my palm.
“Before vows,” she said, “I want to thank someone.” She turned her head slightly and looked straight at me. “Emma.”
Every guest in my row pivoted like sunflowers to stare. My name slid across the pews and landed in my lap with a thud.
I stood because what do you do? You stand. My knees knocked. My mouth remembered how to be a desert.
“Thank you,” she said, veil gathered in one hand, bouquet in the other. “For coming.”
It sounded gentle. It felt like a warning dressed as a hug.
“Would you… join me?” she asked.
Laughter bubbled somewhere behind me—nervous or delighted, I couldn’t tell. People love a moment. They love when the script gets spicy and Instagrammable. I did not move.
The text was still inside my clutch, glowing through the fabric as if it could burn me: You shouldn’t be here.
“Emma?” the pastor prompted, kind. He gestured to the side aisle like a flight attendant indicating exits. “Just a moment up front.”
I took one step. Then another. The aisle was suddenly very long, and everyone’s faces were suddenly very new. I could hear the organist breathing. I could hear a child whisper, “Mom, is she the twin?” and a mother whisper back, “Shh, watch.”
Twin. We don’t say that word in my family. There’s a story about a fever when I was a baby and how Mom slept in a chair by my crib for a week, refusing to blink. There’s a story about a miscarriage that is never detailed and never timed. There are stories in unfinished sentences. But there is not a twin.
At the front, the bride held out her bouquet, like we were passing a baton in the slowest relay race on earth. Up close, she smelled like orange blossom and something colder, like new paper.
“Ready?” she asked. Her voice didn’t echo. Mine did, inside my head.
“For what?” I said, and heard the tremor.
She leaned in, veil drifting like mist between us, and said—soft enough that only I could hear—“To find out which one of us is supposed to be here.”
My fingers went numb.
Somewhere outside, the church bell gave a single accidental clang, like it tripped over its own rope.
“Smile,” she added, eyes bright. “They’re taking pictures.”
I tried. My face wouldn’t follow orders. The photographer lifted his camera, and in the round black eye of the lens I saw a tiny, warped version of us: two women with the same face, standing where only one should stand.
“Emma?” she said again, not into the mic this time, just to me. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. Because right then my clutch vibrated one more time, hard enough that I startled. I glanced down.
A new message, same unknown number:
If you let her finish the sentence, everything changes.
I looked up.
The bride opened her mouth.
