The Dead Bride's Last Letter

1: 1

My twin sister was kidnapped, and I ended up the prime suspect in the profile drawn by my own fianc, the forensic profiler.

The night before they came to arrest me, I finally learned the whole thing was a farce my sister had staged herself.

I meant to expose the truth, but Leona Delgado seized me and dragged me up Mount Rainier.

The avalanche came without warning. Aaron Abbott rushed in and saved my sister, and lost his sight for it.

And I slept forever in that snowfield, together with a truth that never saw the light.

When he woke, Aaron asked Leona to read out my last letter.

Leona paused for a moment, then said it was nothing but a taunt.

"She confessed her crimes. Thank you for giving her the chance to walk free."

The case broke wide open, and Aaron's uncanny profiling method made him famous.

The media fell over each other to report on the man who had turned in his own to serve justice.

Half a month later, he married Leona, and they had a sweet little daughter.

Steady treatment, a smooth life.

Until his daughter, who had only just learned to read, dug out that yellowed sheet of paper.

Soft little fingers pressed against those bloody words, her eyes full of confusion.

"Daddy, these two words, 'wronged,' what do they mean?"

1.

In the living room, the little girl was gripping her pencil, laboring over her letters.

"Daddy, my teacher at preschool said today I can write more words than anyone!"

She lifted her head and tapped her own cheek.

Aaron followed the sound of her voice, pulled her close, and kissed her there.

"Yara Whitfield's amazing. How about Daddy cooks barbecue ribs himself tonight?"

"Yes! Daddy's the best!"

The little girl cheered and bounced, her eyes full of adoration.

And I hovered in the air, cold and hopeless, wholly out of place in that warm little scene.

This was the fifth year since I died.

My fianc Aaron had married the killer. He no longer buried himself in profiles; he'd become a consultant for the major crimes unit and turned back toward home.

Because of that manhunt five years ago, he had gone blind, and his one fixation had been to bring me to justice.

While I was still lost in the thought, Yara had already rummaged through a drawer and pulled out that yellowed letter.

Aaron turned his ear toward her, frowning, and was about to speak when she asked, innocent as anything:

"What does the last thing someone ever writes mean?"

Yara clutched the letter and climbed into his lap to sit, reading it out one word at a time:

"By the time you read this letter, I will already have died wronged. Daddy, the person who wrote this is named Harper Delgado. Who is she?"

Aaron's fingers clenched hard, his knuckles going white.

"It's nothing. Someone I used to know."

Calmly he let the girl go, took the letter, and turned to pick up his cane.

Yara trailed after him, at a loss.

"Daddy, are you going out? You're being so strange. You're scaring me..."

"Don't be scared. Daddy has something urgent. I'll be back soon."

Aaron shut the front door and drew a deep breath.

Rather than wait for Leona to come home and confront her, he wanted to dig into the truth right now.

He opened his phone and quickly arranged to see the other man convicted in the kidnapping case.

I followed him into the prison.

On the far side of the glass, Stephen Harding sat with a strange smile on his face.

Seeing Aaron's sightless eyes, he burst out laughing, rocking back and forth.

"Aaron, so even you get a day like this."

"How does it feel, being a blind man? Can you still profile me now?"

Aaron lifted his head and said evenly:

"You're scared."

"Since I walked in, you've touched your nose three times, and your fingers have rubbed together twelve times without you noticing. You're hiding something from me."

The chains rattled as Stephen straightened up.

"Aaron, you think too highly of yourself. So what if you see through me? Everything I had to say, I said long ago."

"I saw a letter. It says she's already dead."

Aaron slapped the letter against the glass, and Stephen's breathing stopped.

A long while passed before he suddenly spoke.

"That's right. She's been dead a long time. Died wronged."

Aaron's body went rigid, and his cane clattered to the floor.

"What's the act for? Aaron, you were the first person to name her a suspect. She's dead, and you served your justice."

"You've got a good life now. Why go digging?"

"To close the case."

Aaron crouched, feeling for the cane, and gripped it tight in his palm, as if gripping the last thread of his reason.

"Five years on, the real culprit behind the Mount Rainier kidnapping is still free."

"Whatever the lead is, I'll hold onto it."

"And someone like her, so cunning, so obsessive, so changeable, I don't believe she's really dead."

At that his throat worked, and he dropped his gaze to feel the scar in his palm.

"Five years ago, she cut my hand open trying to escape. Nearly severed the tendon."

"You don't need to lie to me. How could someone like that die so easily?"

Stephen scoffed.

"Aaron, Aaron."

"To think you can't tell a killer from a victim, and you can't tell a person from a ghost either."

"What are you getting at?"

Aaron lifted his head and said:

"Leona's legs are crippled, and she's soft, gentle. She's just an innocent victim."

I hovered across from him, and all I could see was that cold, distant look on his face,

the same as five years ago, the day he cut me off and ended it.

Back then I raged and screamed, half out of my mind,

and he only watched me like that, then shut the door and left.

"Besides, five years ago I analyzed every single person around Leona."

"Only Harper ever said she wanted Leona dead, and only she had a motive."

In the chat thread between Aaron and me, his reply was still there.

He'd written: "Harper, stop this madness."

"I can understand you treating your own sister like some imagined enemy."

"But if you kill someone, I will absolutely put you behind bars. For someone as obsessive and violent as you, prison would be better."

I looked at the certain little curl at the corner of his mouth.

Aaron, do you really think you're always right?

Stephen leaned in, intrigued.

His eyes turned mocking.

"But when Leona knelt in front of me, begging me to help her stage a kidnapping, she didn't look one bit crippled."

"Aaron, has it never occurred to you that everything your profile was built on was a lie?"

"Leona staged the whole thing herself, and there was never anything wrong with her legs."

Aaron shot to his feet.

The chair behind him toppled, crashing to the floor.

His face darkened further.

"To muddy the investigation and throw off the police, you really have gone to great lengths."

"Too bad your testimony won't be accepted."

"I'll find the truth myself."

2: 2

When he walked out of the prison, a voice message popped up on his phone.

It was Yara, asking when he was coming home.

Aaron didn't reply. He went straight to the records room, dug out the case files, and carried them over to the major crimes unit.

"New physical evidence has surfaced in the mountain kidnapping case."

"Starting today, we're reopening it."

He took out the final letter sealed in an evidence bag.

The others crowded around it, their faces grim.

"It's been too long. The paper's weathered, extremely fragile."

"The blood's bled through and the writing's blurred. All we can do is have the forensics lab try to restore it."

I stood behind them.

Aaron didn't join the discussion.

He felt his way to a chair and sat down, pressing a tired hand over his eyes.

"Harper, what exactly are you trying to tell me?"

"This letter... if it's real, then were you dead all along?"

"Was my profile actually wrong from the start..."

Beside his hand lay a thick notebook.

Over five years, he'd profiled and sketched the kidnapper more than a hundred times.

Working from nothing but one blurred, dim frame of surveillance footage,

he'd reconstructed countless possible faces of the killer, and every one of them pointed back to me.

He didn't want to believe it either. Again and again he'd tried to overturn the profile,

and not once did it work.

The blood-written letter was sent to the forensics lab.

Aaron didn't go with it.

He sat there, spine straight, eyes shut, calling up the killer's face one more time.

Pencil down, lines drawn, the shape taking form.

I sat beside him and watched his sleeve lift, baring the unhealed knife scar on his wrist.

Five years, and he still hadn't let himself off the hook.

When his fingers pressed hard, red seeped into the gauze.

I wanted to stop him, but my hand passed right through his.

In that moment, I suddenly didn't want the truth to come out so badly anymore.

The lab tech came in carrying the evidence bag.

Aaron's breathing turned heavy all at once.

He thought of what Stephen had said.

"Leona lied to you."

If that was true, then everything he'd built with his profiling was a castle in the air.

The pencil snapped against the paper.

He came back to himself with a jolt and found that the face under his hand,

blurred as it was, still looked like me.

A colleague perched on the edge of the desk and picked up the notebook to look.

"Same as always. Still Harper."

"Mr. Abbott, how do you explain new evidence showing up out of nowhere now?"

"You don't think this is some scheme of Harper's?"

"It was found at my house. The searches back then never covered that place."

"Five years ago, didn't Leona already turn in Harper's taunting letter to be sealed at the station?"

"How is there suddenly another one, a final letter?"

Aaron stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of the desk, not even noticing the spark burning his fingertip red.

The hands that had once treasured nothing more than his sketches were now covered in small scars from cooking for his daughter.

A little burn was nothing.

The forensics tech took his place at the big screen and pressed the remote.

"The results are in."

Aaron pressed his lips together and held his breath.

"The report shows the handwriting on the letter is Harper's."

"And judging from the state of the blood on the paper alone, she lost a massive amount. There's no chance she survived."

Five years ago, Aaron had found both me and Leona at the same time.

He'd walked the mountain for three days and three nights, until the snow blinded him.

All he could do was drag Leona and push toward the way out.

And in that moment, I lay ten steps behind him, my body caked in filthy blood frozen into icicles.

But all Aaron could make out was a smear of red at the edge of his vision.

He shot to his feet as if he'd touched a live wire and fled into the bathroom.

He let no one see his face.

He turned the water on full to cover his sobbing.

"It can't be."

He said it to himself, his voice thin and drifting.

Then he plunged his whole head into the sink, trying to shock himself clear with the icy water.

Three seconds later, Aaron jerked his head up.

He seemed drained of all strength, sinking slowly to the floor.

He opened his mouth wide, wanting to cry, to scream.

In the end all that came out of his throat was a few twisted moans.

Water dripped down, mixing with his tears.

Aaron covered his face with his hand, and suddenly the moment after they'd come down the mountain came back to him.

He'd refused rescue, set on going back to search for Harper.

But Leona, eyes rimmed red, had grabbed him and shown him her raw, bloodied palms.

"Aaron."

"She tried to kill me. I fought back as hard as I could, and I barely made it out alive..."

"I begged my sister to turn herself in, but she said she'd flee somewhere no one could ever find her, that she'd never confess."

And so, back then, he'd given up.

3: 3

Aaron leaned against the wall, shaking all over.

He lowered his head and dug mechanically at the scar on his palm until blood welled up.

He frowned, and kept going.

I hovered in the air, watching him.

Aaron had always been a stubborn man.

Not just about the mountain kidnapping case, but about every other case he'd worked.

The first time we met, he was there to sketch a victim found at the foot of a cliff on the mountain.

I was the mountain guide the major crimes unit had brought in.

The wind and snow were brutal, and he'd fallen behind, lost in his drawing.

I doubled back to find him and found him still crouched under the cliff.

Shivering, and drawing, reconstructing the face from the bones.

"Stay while I finish."

"The case closes next week. Every minute this face isn't done is a minute the victim might miss the family still looking for him."

I set up the tent and boiled water.

He pushed his sketchbook into my hands and said, without a flicker on his face, "Take a look. Does it look right?"

I only found out later.

For the sake of that one moment alone with me, he'd handed everyone on the team an envelope and asked them to head down first.

He'd checked the forecast too, timing it for a stunning sunrise the next morning.

I'd seen sunrises on that mountain hundreds of times.

But only that once did my heart pound like a drum.

He sat beside me, head bent, sketching the line of my face, my hair.

Every detail alive on the page.

Once we were back down, though, I turned him down.

He was a city man, polished from head to toe.

If it weren't for a case, he'd never have set foot on the mountain in his life, his feet blistered with cold, his breath coming short.

But I had made up my mind to be a mountain guide for the rest of mine.

Climbing peak after peak, crossing the snowfields, taking in the whole world of ice and snow.

We came from two different worlds.

He didn't say anything at the time.

The next day, I spotted him again among a group of climbers.

Then the third day, the fourth, the fifth.

For two whole months, he went from the frail bookish type who had to be hauled up the slope,

to a seasoned climber who could reach the summit in one push.

He even caught my arm when I nearly slid down an icy slope while taking photos for a tourist.

I felt the fresh calluses on his hands, the dry, cracked splits in the skin.

But he pulled his hand back and laughed.

"The mountain's already taken me in. I'm waiting for the day you do too."

The day he proposed was on the mountain as well.

Wind and snow beat against our faces, and neither of us felt the cold.

Gripping each other's hands, I felt the blood boiling through me.

That was the kind of man Aaron was.

When he loved me, he threw himself in without a second thought, ready to break his own head open for it.

When he hated me, he did it without hesitation, cold and distant, as if we'd never met.

The happy curve at my mouth slowly turned into something bitter at myself.

The memories were so beautiful.

But even the sweetest candy, held in the mouth long enough, leaves a sour, bitter aftertaste.

The third year we were together.

My twin sister, Leona Delgado, came to me for shelter.

She showed up at my door soaked through, clutching a suitcase, sobbing that she had no home anymore.

Back when our parents divorced.

She chose our wealthy mother, and I was left with our ordinary father.

But Mom went bankrupt, while Dad's business only grew year after year.

Leona had also been left with both legs paralyzed after a car accident.

Sitting in her wheelchair, she called out to Aaron in a timid little voice,

"Aaron."

"Thank you for taking me in."

"I hear you're a forensic sketch artist. That's amazing. I'd love to learn too."

Her gaze slid past me and landed on Aaron.

That look wasn't admiration. It was a certainty that she would have him.

It was a thief eyeing someone else's treasure, greed rising up, ready to destroy what she couldn't take.

From that day on, she stopped being grateful to me.

Instead she voiced her envy without hiding a thing. "Sis, you're so lucky."

"You got the rich dad, so you can do whatever you want, even waste your life playing mountain guide."

"Not like me. Aaron's the only one who thinks I'm worth anything. I've got nothing else."

At the time I only thought she had a strange, prickly temper.

Until the day of the dress fitting, when she deliberately put on a gown and walked out of the fitting room beside me.

Wheedling, she asked Aaron,

"Between me and my sister, which one looks more like your bride?"

A clerk who didn't know us flattered her. "The bride's got fairer skin. She's prettier than the bridesmaid."

She turned to look at me, her eyes full of the satisfaction of getting what she wanted.

4: 4

The major crimes unit cracked a big case, and for the first time ever, Aaron got drunk.

Leona took my car to go pick him up, and had a courier drop a hotel key card off to me.

By the time I got there, she was lying against Aaron's chest.

Her dress had come loose, and she turned her head to me and said, pitiful:

"Sis, just let me have this once."

"You chose Dad, and look how perfect your life turned out. Just give Aaron to me as compensation, okay?"

So righteous. So shameless.

I called the police on the spot and had her committed to a psychiatric hospital.

But she called Aaron, saying the orderlies were abusing and assaulting her, crying and begging him to save her.

"I know, my sister hates me, she wants to teach me a lesson..."

"I know I was wrong... Aaron, help me, beg her to let me live."

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I shouldn't be alive, I shouldn't have liked you, I should just die..."

The moment she saw Aaron, she came down off the rooftop.

Bared the shocking wounds on her arms, on her neck.

Aaron's brow furrowed hard, and he suddenly asked me:

"Harper, do you understand how frightening it is for you to go after a young girl like this?"

"She did something wrong, but that's no excuse for you to take revenge by any means possible!"

"Inciting someone to commit deliberate harm carries a sentence too."

I froze.

In that moment, I felt like he wasn't my fianc, wasn't the man I loved.

And we weren't in our wedding home.

We were in an interrogation room.

He was the forensic profiler, and I was the criminal.

I didn't say anything. I just took off the ring and set it on the table.

Aaron stared at me, and a man who was always calm, his chest rose and fell.

"Refusing to answer? You want to break up? Then let's break up."

"I can't stand a speck of dirt in my eye. Wrong is wrong. Running from it doesn't solve anything."

After the sudden, brutal end of us,

my mental state was terrible, and I nearly stepped off a cliff.

When Aaron found out, he flew to me overnight and cared for me a full day and night.

In the end, he said to me:

"Stop pretending."

"Leona showed me your medical file. You're perfectly fine. Not even malnourished."

"Harper, we're not right for each other. Let's end it here."

He let go of my hand, turned, and pulled up his suitcase.

Outside the door, the girl he'd taken on as his student, Leona, was waiting, eager and expectant.

Something in my nerves twitched, jump after jump.

Leona's face swelled and spun in front of my eyes.

I could hear her laughing, mocking,

could see her pulling faces at me, smug, pinching wounds of every kind into her own skin, fake made real.

I rushed out like a madwoman and asked:

"Is Leona the only one who's right for you?!"

"Aaron, you believe her over me?"

He frowned at me, looking at me like some crazy woman.

Finally he sighed. "Harper, go rest first."

"We both need to calm down."

After that, we never saw each other again.

But he still answered my messages, patiently, tirelessly.

Every week he had someone bring flowers to my ward, jasmine and sweetbriar and roses, taking turns.

Every single one he'd picked out himself.

The day I improved enough to be discharged, I got his invitation letter.

"Let's go watch the sunrise over Mount Rainier together. Harper, I can't lie to myself and not love you."

"So let's face these problems together."

But what we ended up facing was the video of Leona being kidnapped.

In one corner of the video, the rose tattoo on the back of the kidnapper's employer's hand showedexactly the same as mine.

I became the prime suspect.

Sitting in the iron chair, facing Aaron's cold questioning, I said nothing.

"I didn't order it."

"If you can find the evidence, go ahead and arrest me."

I had no evidence. I couldn't prove myself.

By the time I finally uncovered that horrifying truth,

I had already died on Mount Rainier, with no chance left to say it out loud.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, and the heavy voice of a technician came through.

"Mr. Abbott, you need to come see this."

He was holding up the analysis report, his hand shaking.

"The contents of the final letterit's too... terrible!"