The Anniversary Photograph
This week’s Story Starter teaser is:
They had been together for twenty-five years when…
Fandango’s Story Starter #264
The Anniversary Photograph
They had been together for twenty-five years when the photograph arrived.
There was no return address, no note, nothing to explain why someone had slipped an old Polaroid into a plain brown envelope.
Claire stood at the kitchen counter, staring at it.
She knew the photograph.
At least, she thought she did.
Two young people stood outside a little seaside café, sunburned and laughing. Mike had one arm wrapped around her waist while the wind blew strands of dark hair across her face.
Their first holiday together.
July 2001.
She remembered the café. The terrible coffee. Mike insisting they sit outside despite the wind. She even remembered the dress she had been wearing.
“Mike?”
He wandered into the kitchen.
“What?”
“This came in the post.”
She handed him the photograph.
For a moment, he smiled.
“God, look at us.”
Then he turned it over.
His smile disappeared.
Four words had been written across the back in black ink.
YOU CHOSE THE WRONG ONE.
Claire gave an uneasy laugh.
“Well, that’s rather dramatic.”
Mike didn’t answer.
“Who would send something like that?”
Still nothing.
“Mike?”
He turned the photograph over again and stared at it.
Then his face went pale.
“Claire… look at your necklace.”
She leaned closer.
Around the young woman’s neck hung a tiny silver crescent moon.
“So?”
Mike slowly lowered himself into a kitchen chair.
“You didn’t own that necklace then.”
Claire frowned.
“Of course I did.”
“No.”
Something in his voice made her look at him.
Mike reached beneath his shirt and pulled a chain over his head. Hanging from it was another tiny silver moon, almost identical to the one in the photograph.
Claire stopped breathing.
“I gave you this,” he said quietly, “the night we met.”
“I know.”
“No, Claire.”
His hand was trembling now.
“I gave it to your sister.”
The kitchen seemed suddenly too quiet.
Claire looked down at the photograph again.
At the dark hair.
The familiar smile.
The silver moon.
At the woman she had spent twenty-five years allowing Mike to believe was her.
And suddenly Mike remembered something else.
There were no photographs from their first year together.
Not one.
He had always believed they’d simply been lost.
Now, looking at Claire’s face, he wasn’t so sure.
He turned the Polaroid over once more.
YOU CHOSE THE WRONG ONE.
“Claire,” he whispered, “what happened to Anna?”
For the first time in twenty-five years, his wife looked at him like a stranger.
And locked the kitchen door.
To be continued… 👀
#FandangosStoryStarter
#FSS
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
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