The One Before: A totally gripping suspense thriller with a shocking twist

by Miranda Smith

  “Anne?” I call, but she’s not on the porch. She’s gone.

  At the front of the house, I hear a car engine start. Coop follows me as I race to the front porch. By the time we’re both outside, I see Anne’s taillights pull onto the main road.

  “Did she leave?” he asks. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” I think back to our conversation, to everything that was said and done before Coop arrived. “I have no idea.”

  Thirty-Two

  Madison

  “I don’t understand,” Coop says. He’s sitting on the sofa, his palm against his forehead. The scent of gardenias—the one’s from Anne’s bouquet—fills the room.

  “It’s like she ran away once she knew you were here.” I keep looking out the window, thinking she might come back to offer an explanation. I still don’t know why she took off the way she did.

  “Why would she leave so abruptly?”

  “No clue.” I sit beside him on the couch and pull both legs onto the cushion. “She got emotional out of nowhere before you arrived. I’ve never seen her act that way. Even when she talked about her daughter.”

  “Her daughter?”

  “She mentioned during one of our previous appointments that her daughter had died. That’s why it’s been so long since she’s planned a wedding.”

  Coop looks confused. “This was Anne Richards. Her company is based out of Knoxville, right?”

  “Yes. Have you met her before?”

  “Ages ago. I’m not sure I’d remember her face, but I used to play baseball with her son. He was one of three boys. He didn’t have a sister.” He sits up, resting both elbows on his knees. “You’re sure the woman’s name is Anne Richards?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Your mother gave me her information.”

  “Has Mom met with her?”

  “She was supposed to join us today before she fell ill.”

  “Did you look into this woman before you hired her?” He stands, pacing between the sofa and fireplace. “Do any research?”

  “Of course I did. I looked up her website and everything. She’s completely legit.”

  He pulls out his phone and types in the business details. As I did, he scrolls through galleries of various events, but there’s no picture of Anne on her website.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, craning my neck to get a better look at his phone.

  “I don’t want to startle you.” He slides his phone into his pocket and looks at me. “But what if the woman in our house wasn’t Anne Richards?”

  “What do you mean? This is our third meeting this month. She delivered our wedding invitations today. Who else could she be?”

  “Look.” He pulls out his phone again and types Anne Richards, Knoxville, TN into the main search bar. Various women pop up. He scrolls through several, until he finds an advertisement for a local sponsor. He holds up the phone. “This is the Anne Richards I remember. It may not be a recent picture, but it’s good enough. Is this the woman who was in our house?”

  I stare at the woman on the screen. She’s short and squat with auburn curls and a wide smile. She looks nothing like the Anne I know. Nothing like the woman I’ve allowed into our home.

  “That’s not Anne,” I whisper.

  “This is Anne Richards, an event planner in Knoxville.” He stuffs the phone in his pocket and resumes pacing. “The woman you’ve been meeting with is someone else.”

  I shake my head, my thoughts bouncing between the picture of Anne on Coop’s phone and the image of Anne in my mind. “I don’t understand. Why would a woman pretend to be someone else?”

  “You said she talked to you about her daughter. And she started acting weird once she knew I was here, right?”

  I nod. “It’s like she didn’t want you to see her.”

  Coop closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. “Madison, I think I know who the woman was.”

  “Who?”

  “Celia’s mother.”

  “What? Why would Celia’s mother want to pose as our wedding planner?”

  He sighs. “I think she’s trying to disrupt things. That’s what she does.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” I remember the antics this woman pulled in the wake of her daughter’s death, but according to Coop, she’s not harassed him in years. “After all this time, she can’t still have it out for you.”

  “She thinks I killed her daughter. That’s a hatred that never goes away.”

  I return to the window, hoping against hope ‘Anne’ will return and make sense of all this. “The way you described Celia’s mother, she’s unstable and erratic. Anne’s never struck me as off. She’s always been level-headed.”

  “Pretending to be another person isn’t very stable.”

  “But why?” I’m crying now, hot tears rolling down my cheeks. I feel vulnerable and taken advantage of all at once.

  “Can you think of any other person who would want to fool us?” He sits beside me, stretching his arm over my shoulders. “It must have been her. She vowed to make sure I’d never be happy. I just didn’t think all these years later she’d keep her promise.”

  “I welcomed a complete stranger into our home.” I lean over and cry into Coop’s arms. “What was I thinking?”

  “She wasn’t a stranger to you. Mom gave you her information. Who knows what kind of tricks this woman pulled? She’s clearly sick.”

  I’ve been deceived by more than just Anne; I’ve fooled myself. Again. I lowered my guard, and it backfired. I feel like I did the day I learned ‘Chrissy’s’ story was nothing but a lie. Like I’ve been manipulated, yet somehow deserving of shame. Coming here was supposed to heal me from that embarrassment. Instead, this situation has further highlighted that my gut is not to be trusted.

  “She said she booked a florist and band,” I say, playing back every detail of my conversations with Anne. “Was that all bullshit?”

  “We’ll have to look into it.” He sounds nervous, like this is the first in a series of disappointments he expects to face.

  I walk into the dining room. The stack of invitations is gone. The only evidence of Anne’s presence is a pen she’s left behind. I walk into the kitchen, staring at the boxes on the counter. There’s a different slice of cake inside each, which only adds to my confusion. The actions Anne must have taken to keep up this ruse!

  “You can’t blame yourself,” he says, walking behind me and placing a hand on my shoulder. Those are the same words he used when I told him about the ‘Chrissy’ retraction, when I admitted I’d lost my job.

  “That stupid bitch.” I lift a slice from its box and throw it, missing the trashcan and splattering icing against the wall.

  “Madison, what are you doing?” Coop asks, taking a step back.

  “No telling what that psycho did. The food is probably poisoned.” I take another slice and throw it too. I discard the desserts and curse and cry. Coop lets me. He sees that I’m ashamed and embarrassed, and he knows he has some fault in this. This is our life together. Our future will always be impacted by his past.

  Thirty-Three

  Madison

  I can’t ignore the flutter of intimidation I feel every time we drive past the iron gates leading onto the Douglas family property. We are going to Josephine’s house for Sunday brunch, her latest attempt at making us feel better. It’s been three days since I learned the woman in our home claiming to be Anne was an imposter. Several questions linger, and the answers I have received are disappointing. Josephine immediately reached out to the real Anne Richards—something she’s apologized profusely for not doing earlier—who confirmed no one in her company had anything to do with the Sharpe/Douglas wedding.

  We contacted the florist and the band and the baker ‘Anne’ alleged to have arranged. None had our wedding on the books; in fact, they were reserved with other engagements, so there’s no chance of getting them. We lost precious time pretending. All the samples brought into our house were ploys, bait to keep me hooked. She
probably got the cakes we were meant to sample from the Walmart bakery. The invitations we addressed are gone, likely already trashed. Not only did ‘Anne’ deceive me, she ruined our wedding in the process.

  Josephine has gone to great lengths to ameliorate the situation. She’s contacted friends, asking them to pull strings, but there’s only so much that can be done for a wedding date fast approaching.

  “I can’t believe someone would go to such lengths to ruin your wedding,” Regina says. Even she’s outraged by this. I’ve figured out she likes being the antagonist in her family, and anyone who tries to usurp that role pisses her off.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I say. Sitting on Josephine’s back porch, staring at the lake in the distance. The sun is beginning to set, stretching its mirrored image across the still waters. It looks so peaceful here, yet all I feel inside is upheaval and uncertainty.

  “I blame myself,” Josephine says. “I should have been more involved. I should have contacted Anne myself.”

  I fear this event is setting a precedent for others moving forward. Josephine went against her nature in letting me organize the wedding on my own, and it turned into a complete failure. I don’t want his family to think I’m incapable.

  “We wanted to handle this,” I say. “I was handling it. I didn’t realize another person could be so deceptive.”

  “How could you know?” Josephine reaches over to pat my hand.

  Regina lifts a heavy pot off the porch planks. There’s a pack of cigarettes and a lighter underneath. She takes one.

  “Darling, don’t smoke,” Josephine says. “It makes you look so trashy.”

  “They are your cigarettes,” she tells her mother.

  “Only in times of stress,” Josephine says, looking over her shoulder.

  Regina puffs a large plume of smoke in Josephine’s direction. She turns to me and smirks. Witnessing my upset in the past few days has softened her, at least toward me.

  Roman and Coop join us outside. Coop is carrying a cardboard box. He places it on the table and pulls out a sepia-tinted newspaper.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “I’ve been trying to find a picture of her,” he says, flipping through pages. “I want to be sure it’s her.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Celia’s mother.” He scans the newspaper. “She should be in one of these articles.”

  “Has anyone looked online?” Regina asks.

  “She doesn’t have any social media,” Roman says. “To be honest, I figured she’d drunk herself to death ages ago.”

  “I already looked through anything I thought might have her photo,” Josephine tells Coop. She looks at me. “Bless her heart, the woman wasn’t an upstanding member of society. Very forgettable.”

  “This is the box with all the Celia articles,” Coop says. “Surely there’s a picture of her in here.”

  My body tenses as I rock back in the chair. It’s strange Josephine would keep articles about such a traumatic incident—articles I can’t even find online because they’ve been wiped clean.

  “Unfortunately, that woman wasn’t much of a mother.” Josephine closes her eyes. “I think that’s why she always had it out for Cooper. She needed someone to blame other than herself.”

  “If she’d spent more time caring for Celia when she was alive, maybe all this would have turned out differently,” Regina says. Leaning against the porch banister, she flicks her cigarette butt toward the lake. It lands in a patch of weeds by the water.

  “Here.” Coop walks closer to me, holding the paper in his hands. “This is the best picture I’ve found.”

  The headline reads: Whisper Falls Remembers Missing Teenager. The picture appears to be taken at a vigil, as there’s a large crowd standing in front of an altar of candles and flowers. The smaller picture is a close-up of a woman. She’s covering her face with one hand, clinging to a teddy bear with the other. She’s crying.

  “Is that her?” Coop asks.

  I stare at the picture, trying to see past the black and white pixilation. The woman’s frame matches ‘Anne’, and they both have dark hair, but her jaw is the only visible part of her face. And the photo is thirteen years old.

  “It could be her,” I say, feeling all their eyes on me. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll keep looking.” Coop folds the paper and stuffs it back into the box. I wonder what other words and pictures are in that box. What other secrets.

  “There’s no point in driving yourself crazy. There’s nothing we can do,” I say.

  “There’s a lot we can do,” Roman counters. “We can charge her with fraud, identity theft. If she deposited the check you gave her, that’s even better.”

  “Let’s just move on,” I say, walking closer to the water. “This woman has already ruined enough.”

  “This is a setback.” Coop stands behind me and rubs my arm. “We won’t let her ruin the wedding.”

  “We have two months. The vendors I thought we booked are unavailable,” I say.

  “We can push back the date until spring. That will give us plenty of time to plan,” says Coop.

  “I don’t want to push back the date because of her.”

  “Then don’t.” Regina walks closer, still smelling like tobacco. “You have a dress. You have a location. I’m doing the food. This woman didn’t plan the whole wedding, just parts of it. We can find you a florist and entertainment.”

  “For once, my daughter is right,” Josephine says. “It might inconvenience people to commit to something last-minute, but I can be persuasive.”

  At least her checkbook can be. They’re right; the idea of having to book things months in advance and hire out every detail is a millennial concept. We’re planning a party, and I can do that in the remaining weeks.

  “I’m in if you are,” Coop says, kissing the top of my head.

  “I’m all in.” I place my ear against his cheek, watching ripples dance in the lake.

  Thirty-Four

  Helena

  I think I left in time. I think. I got a quick glimpse of Cooper’s profile as he stood in the foyer, but I snuck out the back door before he could see my face. After I went to such great lengths to throw Josephine off my trail, I can’t believe Cooper arrived when he did. And right when I was on the verge of telling Madison everything!

  I hadn’t planned on exposing my true motives during our conversation, otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted a week’s worth of motel money on those gaudy invitations. Or visited two different bakeries ordering slices of cake. I did that because I hoped for a little more time with Madison. I’d planned to call her up later in the week and instruct her to meet me outside of the house. I’d have her alone without fear of being interrupted. And yet, hearing her pine over Cooper and how wonderful he was—I couldn’t stand one more minute of it.

  Madison must have enjoyed our visits more than I realized. The meal she provided proves that. If I’d had only another half hour, this entire mess would be over. Now the mess is multiplying. She’s called six times since I left, but I’m too afraid to answer. My nerves are still rattled from my close encounter with Cooper.

  It’s now been four days since I darted out of the house without explanation; I make the decision to call Madison myself, hoping I can salvage the connection we’ve made. I’ll tell her some emergency arose and I had no choice but to leave when I did. I know she’ll have questions, but if I can only convince her to meet me one last time, I can finally finish this. Maybe it’s not too late for her to know the truth.

  “Anne?” she barks into the phone when she answers. Her voice still carries all the worry and concern she must have felt when I left.

  “Madison, I must apologize—”

  “I know you’re not Anne Richards.” This time when she speaks, her voice lacks emotion. She’s severed the bonds I’d spent weeks trying to create.

  “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I smile, alone in my motel room, an attempt
to sound at ease. “Let me explain—”

  “I don’t know why you did this to me,” she says, a discernible quiver in her voice, “but I never want to speak with you again.”

  She hangs up. For a moment, I hold the phone in my hands, hoping this is a mistake and Madison will call back. But she doesn’t. I scream, throwing the phone against the yellowed walls. My anger consumes me now. All my plans had fallen into place effortlessly until this point. Until Cooper ruined everything. Again.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Cooper did see me and now everything has been revealed. What if they’ve pieced the rest of my story together? That means Cooper has had four days to get into Madison’s head and fill her with his lies. There’s no way I can make amends and convince her to meet me, if that’s the case. I don’t know how to rebound from this disaster.

  All I know is I’ve made it this far. I’m not leaving Whisper Falls until Madison knows the truth. I’m not leaving until Cooper gets what he deserves.

  Thirty-Five

  Madison

  It’s been a week since I learned Anne Richards isn’t who she said she was. Coop is scheduled to attend a press awards dinner in Nashville tonight. It’s a bad time for him to leave town, but I don’t want to be the scared woman who begs him to stay. He needs to know I can handle myself, which is why I declined his offer to cancel his trip.

  “It’s only one night,” he says, zipping his suitcase. It sounds like he’s reassuring himself more than he is me. He clenches his jaw and lowers his eyes in defeat. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Roman and Regina are coming over for dinner.”

  “Good.” This seems to relax him. He picks up the suitcase, and I follow him down the stairs. “I could always drive back tonight.”