The Ghost at the Engagement Party

Ethan Hart was supposed to be celebrating his future.
Instead, his past had just walked through the doors in a faded delivery uniform.
âI thought you were dead,â he whispered againâthis time not as shock, but as something closer to disbelief breaking apart.
The woman standing near the entrance didnât move.
Lily.
Or at least⊠the face he had buried in his memory for twenty years.
Her hands tightened around the stack of parcels she was delivering to the wrong ballroom. Her eyes flickered, uncertain, like someone being recognized in a language she no longer spoke.
âIâm sorry,â she said softly. âYou have the wrong person.â
But Ethan knew.
He knew the small scar on her left wrist from the IV line.
He knew the faint tremor in her fingers when she was nervous.
And most of allâhe knew the memory that had never left him.
The childrenâs ward.
Paper cranes.
A promise whispered through hospital walls:
âIf we survive, we find each other again.â
Behind him, his fiancée Clara reached for his arm.
âEthan, who is she?â
But Ethan didnât answer.
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Because for the first time in twenty years, the world had stopped making sense.
And the ghost he had mourned⊠was breathing in front of him.