But Patricia had a small crease of worry between her eyebrows, and when I looked, Hannah’s assigned seat in the front row was empty.

Not just empty for the moment, the way a seat is when its owner has stepped away.

Empty in a way that had started, faintly, to feel wrong.

So I went looking for her.

I checked the garden where the guests were gathering.

I checked the catering kitchen, weaving between the staff and their trays.

I checked the guest rooms and the long upstairs hallway of the lodge.

And no one, not a single person I asked, remembered seeing my daughter walk by, which for a girl in a pale-blue dress carrying a flower basket on a wedding day was strange enough that the first real thread of fear began to pull tight in my chest.