You were right.

I didn’t wait for her answer. I didn’t know where Kendra and the others were, but I had to find Lily and get us both home before anything bad happened.

The bridge looked even more terrifying tonight, as if it had grown in size since I’d last seen it. A black hulking monster lurking in the distance. I couldn’t see anyone as I approached, but I heard voices.

“Lily?” I called, and the voices stopped. “Lily? Come down from there.”

Nothing.

I climbed the steep slope to the bridge. The barricade warning people away had been shifted to the side enough for someone to slip through. The bridge spanned the railroad tracks below and was about as wide as a yoga mat. Two light posts on each end gave off a feeble orange glow. I could barely make out two figures in the middle of the bridge. Girls in white bridal dresses, long hair flowing out around them, faces unnaturally pale. Lily and Ellen. Gothic ghost brides.

“Leave us alone.” Lily’s words rang out. Cold. Angry.

“It’s not safe here,” I said, desperately. The other moms could be here at any moment. “What are you two doing here?”

“Lily and I were just talking about Daphne,” Ellen said, chillingly calm. “Want to join us? Did you ever wonder why she’d come up here? How she even knew about this bridge? She was new to the neighborhood, after all.”

I inched toward the barricade, loose dirt skidding around my boots. The bridge’s drop was most dangerous halfway across. If you fell off there (or were pushed), it would be like dropping off a tall building onto the railroad tracks below.

I stopped, resisting the urge to flatten myself on the ground.

“Lily, I’ve had about enough. We need to go.”

“You’ve had enough? You? What about me? I know what you did, Mom. Ellen told me everything.” She’d been crying.

My eyes were adjusting, and I could see the girls more clearly. Alarmingly, one of them was standing on a narrow platform extending from the bridge right above the train tracks. In the darkness, it almost looked like she was flying.

“I don’t know what that means, Lily.”

“You’re a liar,” Lily yelled. “You and Ellen’s father, Mom. It’s disgusting.”

I maneuvered around the barricade and stepped onto the bridge. “Lily, I really need you to listen to me right now. It was a long time ago,” I said. “I made a mistake. I was young.”

“Bet you can’t tell us apart, Theresa.” I didn’t like the way Ellen said my name. “We’re like identical twins. Sisters, maybe.”

But I could. I was only a few feet from them now. Two ghost brides, their white dresses glowing eerily in the unnatural orange light. Lily jutting out on the platform, Ellen standing in front of her.

Holding her hand.

“Ellen...”