The morning after her perfect wedding, my sister vanished without a trace—no note, no goodbye, just silence. For ten years, we lived with questions. Then, in a dusty attic box, I found a letter she wrote the day she disappeared—and everything changed.
The last time I saw my sister Laura, she was spinning in circles on the makeshift dance floor Daddy had hammered together that morning, her bare feet moving through beer-slicked plywood and soft patches of dirt.
The hem of her dress, once ivory, was stained with a mix of barbecue sauce, spilled punch, and good old Iowa dust.
But none of that mattered. She looked like joy wrapped in lace.
The backyard glowed under strings of yellow lights Mama had saved from Christmas.
The scent of lilacs drifted from the bushes, mixing with the smoke from Uncle Randy’s grill.
Folks were laughing, kids chasing fireflies, and old country music floated in the air like it had nowhere better to be.
“You’re really married now,” I said as we leaned over the lemonade table, both of us sticky and flushed.
She turned to me, her cheeks pink, eyes sparkling.
“I know. Isn’t it wild?”
Luke, her new husband, waved from the other side of the yard, where he was laughing with the groomsmen.
He looked like the luckiest man in the world.
Laura waved back but then glanced down for just a second. Her smile faltered. I didn’t notice it then.
Not really. I was too caught up in the glow of it all—the celebration, the noise, the sense that we were all exactly where we were meant to be.