The chapel at St. Jude’s on the hill always smelled of old beeswax and damp wool, even in June. When Arthur and I picked it out twelve months before, I thought the smell was just history. I thought it meant permanence.

Lily was five then, or close enough to it that every month felt like a different kid. She had this way of tucking her chin into her collarbone whenever Arthur walked into the kitchen, just a tiny downward slide of her shoulders like she was bracing for a door to slam.

I told myself she was adjusting. That’s what you say when a man moves his boots into your hallway and your daughter stops leaving her bedroom without her favorite toy.

Arthur was good with her at first. He brought home little boxes of raspberry chocolates from the bakery down on River Street and he fixed the squeak in the pantry door without me asking. He had this quiet, steady way of talking that made you feel like you were the only person in the room.

“She’ll come around,” he told me one night while we were washing dishes. The water was hot and the window was fogged over with steam. “Kids like routine. Once we have the ceremony, she’ll see we’re a real unit.”

I wiped down the counter and believed him because I wanted to. You get tired of being the only one holding the mortgage and the laundry basket. You want someone to tell you the heavy lifting is over.

By the morning of the wedding, the bridal room behind the vestry was already too warm. Aunt Clara was pinning my veil into place with fingers that shook just a little bit, muttering about hairpins and church bells.

Lily was sitting on the horsehair bench by the radiator, her little patent-leather shoes dangling six inches off the floor. She had her stuffed rabbit, Bunny, clutched so tight against her chest that her knuckles looked like small white stones.

“Mommy,” she whispered. The organist in the loft was starting the low, rumbling practice run of the processional, the bass notes vibrating right up through the floorboards. “Mommy, please look inside Bunny.”

I didn’t look down at first. I was staring at my own reflection in the narrow gilt mirror, checking the lace on my bodice. “Honey, not right now. The carriage is outside and Aunt Clara has to fix this veil.”

Her lower lip started to wobble, that awful trembling way it did right before she threw up or cried until she choked. “No. Now. Please.”

She held the toy out toward me, her small arm shaking. There was a jagged hole ripped in the side seam right under the rabbit’s left ear, stitched back up with bright orange dental floss that didn’t match the gray plush at all.

I knelt down in my silk gown, the heavy fabric pooling around my knees on the dusty linoleum, and slid my index finger into the stuffing.

My skin brushed against something hard and flat. It wasn’t cotton or polyfill. It had a cold, smooth edge of molded plastic and a tiny pinhole grid on the front.

My whole body went cold. The church bells outside sounded like they were underwater.

Suddenly every single dark month we had lived through clicked together like a deadbolt sliding home.

The way Lily flinched every time Arthur closed the back door. The way she whispered into her pillow at night when she thought I was asleep. The way she begged me not to leave her alone in the living room with him while I went to the pharmacy.

He didn’t just buy her the toy. He had put a listening fob inside it so he could hear every word she said when I was out of the house.

“Did he tell you not to tell me?” I asked, and my voice didn’t even sound like mine. It sounded thin, like paper tearing.

Lily just nodded, her eyes wide and wet, and buried her face in my shoulder.

Aunt Clara cleared her throat from behind us, holding a can of hairspray like a weapon. “Grace, honey, the pastor’s signaling. It’s time.”

I stood up so fast my knees popped. I didn’t care about the veil. I didn’t care that the white silk of my hem was dragging through the dust under the bench. I grabbed Lily’s small, damp hand so hard she winced, and I walked us out of that dressing room and down the short hall toward the heavy oak doors of the sanctuary.

The organ was hitting the full swell of the Bridal Chorus. Two hundred people in pastel dresses and summer suits were turning around in their pews, smiling that soft, expectant wedding smile.

Arthur was standing up by the altar in his charcoal-gray suit, looking down the aisle with that calm, patient expression I had spent two years misreading. His hands were folded neatly in front of him.

I didn’t stop at the back. I kept walking right down the center runner, the heels of my shoes clicking loud and sharp against the stone floor.

People started shifting in the pews. Whispers started up near the fourth row, a low buzzing sound like a hive getting kicked.

Arthur took half a step forward from the altar, his smile faltering just a fraction at the edges. He probably thought I had dropped my bouquet or the dress was caught.

I stopped about ten feet from the first pew, right under the stained-glass window of Saint Jude. I reached into the pocket of my gown, pulled out the small black tracking device, and held it out flat on my open palm so the light from the window hit the plastic casing.

The church went dead silent. Even the organist stopped mid-chord, the heavy notes dying off into a groaning wheeze.

“There won’t be a wedding today,” I said. My voice carried up into the rafters, bouncing off the stone walls.

Arthur’s face didn’t go white; it went tight, the muscles in his jaw bunching up until the skin looked gray. “Grace, what are you, “

“Don’t,” I said. That was the only word I gave him.

I turned around, holding Lily so close I could feel the hard, fast beat of her little heart against my ribs, and we walked back up the aisle together. Nobody stood up. Nobody tried to stop us. The heavy oak doors swung shut behind us with a solid, final thud, cutting off the light and the noise and the whole miserable two years in one clean stroke.

By the time we got back to the house, the sun was sitting right on the ridge behind the water tower, throwing long orange bars across the kitchen linoleum.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

I unlocked the back door, and the air inside smelled of old coffee and dust. I hadn’t realized until that exact second how much I hated the smell of this place.

I walked straight to the kitchen table and set the little black fob down right in the center, next to the mail holder.

Lily sat down in her usual chair, her legs swinging. She looked down at Bunny, whose side was still torn open where I had pulled the plastic out.

“Can we fix him, Mommy?” she asked softly. Her voice didn’t have that tight, shaky edge anymore.

I pulled a spool of gray thread from the junk drawer and sat down across from her, my wedding dress bunched up around my ankles like a pile of dirty snow.

“We’ll fix him together,” I said, threading the needle with fingers that finally stopped shaking.