The Bride's Curse by Glenys O'Connell Page B

back when, and it still boasted the original elegant woodwork and tall, deep windows of its Victorian heritage. The effect was one of dignity and scholarship, a calming atmosphere that she always enjoyed.
    Area libraries had recently received funding to transfer historic documents to computer, and a smiling librarian told Kelly that the year she was looking for, 1972, was now available digitally.
    It took only a few clicks of the computer mouse to find the society pages in each issue starting in May of 1972, the date of the receipt for the Cursed Bridal Gown. She worked slowly and steadily through page after page until a photograph on the second week in July’s issue stole her breath away.
    A beautiful young woman, petite and slender, face radiant with dreams, stood on the steps of a church Kelly recognized as being in a Derry parish. She looked glorious in a beautiful floor length gown with a delicate lace veil, two small chubby cheeked flower girls in attendance. A silver-haired man who the caption stated was Mary Atwell’s father, Richard, stood proudly beside her.
    In a second photograph, the weeping and disheveled bride, her face turned away from the camera, clutched onto her father and mother for support as they appeared again on the church steps.
    The headline read:
Heiress Mary Atwell Left at the Altar!
    And the sub-heading:
No Sign of Missing Groom at Fairy Tale Wedding—Did Childhood Sweetheart Scarper?
    Tears pooled in Kelly’s eyes and her heart went out to this long ago bride, seeing in her the ruined dreams and broken promises she’d known herself when Wayne ended their engagement.
    At least he’d done it before their wedding day. The rat.
    Dammit, if she found Mary Atwell’s groom, she’d probably punch him on the nose.
    How satisfying it would have been to punch her own erstwhile groom when he’d broken their engagement, but she had known even then that wouldn’t have mended the crack in her heart, shored up her battered self-esteem, or fixed her broken trust.
    One thing was sure—Mary Atwell was wearing the Cursed Bridal Gown at that long-ago wedding. That distinctive French designer styling and sumptuous fabric was unmistakable to a trained eye like Kelly’s.
    One look at that broken bride and it seemed obvious why that gorgeous fifty-year-old wedding dress might be cursed. The next question would be to find Mary Atwell and see what could be done about the ill luck that dogged the gown before it wrecked the hopes and dreams of yet another couple. Despite what Daria Welcome insisted about not believing in curses, Kelly wasn’t at all sure disbelief took away their power.
    The question in her mind was whether Mary Atwell’s wedding turned into a disaster because of the gown, or whether she had cursed that wedding dress in her grief. If she had been the one to lay the curse, then Kelly thought she probably wouldn’t like Brett’s favorite aunt very much. Which was a pity because she liked Brett. A lot.
    “She must be one powerful witch to lay a curse that would last half a century,” she muttered to herself, and felt suddenly cold.
    The only good thing she could think of was that at least she had established a connection that pointed to the reason the dress appeared to be so unlucky. She noted the name of the groom. Troy Matthews. Chewing on her bottom lip, she wondered if the Old Man on the Bench was actually the ghost of the long lost groom. If Brett was Mary’s blood relative, then that would explain the connection, the way the ghost disappeared whenever Brett appeared. This seemed such a cozy explanation, before she remembered that the ghost had claimed to have hurt
two
people.
Assuming Mary Atwell wasn’t into a
ménage a trois
, just who could the other person be?
    She was so deeply engrossed in these thoughts that she jumped visibly when a hand came down gently on her shoulder.
    “Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” library staffer Rachel Riley cried,