The Second Vow
The bouquet hit the ground before she did. A perfect cluster of ivory peonies, blush roses, and eucalyptus, bound in lace—once fragrant and full of promise—now lay half-crushed under her heel as she stumbled back, clutching her heart like it might escape her chest. It was not until her mother reached her, whispering words too soft to grasp, that Isla realized she’d stopped breathing.
The church was still. No gasps, no murmurs—only the impossibly loud silence of too many people trying not to stare. The altar ahead, empty. The aisle behind, miles of judgmental eyes and sympathetic half-smiles.
And him—Jackson—gone.
Not late. Not hesitating behind some carved door with cold feet and a stuttering vow. Just… not there.
Someone was speaking—her father? The priest? The echo of her own humiliation? She couldn’t tell. All she saw was the waxen glint of the candles, the rose-strewn floor where they were meant to walk together, and the ring—a sapphire, his mother’s—still warm on her finger.
Later, she would not remember how she got home. Only that there was a black car, a crying bridesmaid, and a sickening scent of lilies that followed her into sleep like a ghost.
Ten days later, Isla stepped off the boat onto the black sand shore of Kefalonia, Greece, with a single suitcase and no return ticket.
The villa was perched alone above a cove, whitewashed walls and blue shutters staring blindly out at the Ionian Sea. The honeymoon had been his idea. “Somewhere private, a place that feels like a secret,” he’d said. “A place we won’t forget.”
She almost canceled. Almost.
But something in her—the same something that refused to let her cry in front of her parents, that stared at the empty pews with dry eyes—made her come. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was grief disguised as bravery. Or maybe it was the awful hunger to prove that she could still live, even after he’d made her feel less than alive.
The host, an old Greek woman with papery hands and sharp eyes, barely spoke English. She pressed a key into Isla’s palm and whispered, “Don’t sleep on the sea-facing side. Not during the new moon.”
Isla smiled politely and chalked it up to superstition.
The villa was beautiful in a way that didn’t care if you noticed. Ancient olive trees rustled outside the kitchen window. A bowl of lemons sat on the counter like an offering. The bed—massive, shrouded in gauzy white curtains—smelled of lavender and sun.
And still, he haunted everything. His absence filled the rooms like a second guest.
On the third night, she dreamed of Jackson. Not the way he’d looked last—hauntingly absent—but younger, barefoot on a shoreline, laughing, calling her name. She woke with tears on her cheeks and a salt taste in her mouth.
She began sleeping with the windows shut, despite the heat.
She met him on the fifth day, down by the cove where the waves met jagged stone and the tide whispered things she couldn’t quite catch.
He stood ankle-deep in the surf, shirtless, seaweed clinging to his legs like veins. At first, she thought it was Jackson. Her heart lurched. The same lean frame, the same dark hair falling across his brow in careless strands. The same ocean-colored eyes.
But then he turned, and she saw it.
The difference was subtle—something in the set of the jaw, the half-smile that hinted at secrets, not sincerity. Jackson had been light. This man was shadow.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, voice low and musical. “You looked lost.”
“I wasn’t.” She hated how defensive she sounded. “Just… walking.”
“In the sea?”
“I like the water,” she lied.
He smiled wider, and something in her chest twisted. Not fear. Not quite.
“I’m Caleb,” he said, holding out a hand. “You’re not from here.”
“No. Just visiting.” She hesitated. “Isla.”
“Beautiful name. Like an island.”
She nodded, unsure what else to say. He was staring at her—not hungrily, not cruelly, just… deeply, like someone reading a page twice because it felt familiar. It unnerved her.
“I haven’t seen anyone else around,” she said, more to fill the silence than anything.
“I come and go,” he said. “I like places people forget.”
She laughed, nervously. “That’s poetic.”
“It’s true.”
They parted without exchanging numbers, addresses, or even promises. But that night, she dreamed of him, too. Not Caleb, not Jackson—both. Blended into something ancient, blue-eyed and barefoot, whispering her name with the tide.
Isla began seeing him everywhere. The market in Argostoli. The cliffs near Myrtos Beach. Even once, fleetingly, in the old church down the road—though when she turned, the pews were empty, save for a candle snuffed by wind.
Each time, Caleb greeted her like it was coincidence. But there was something choreographed in their meetings—like stepping into a dance already in motion.
He never touched her. Not once. But his presence filled the space between them like heat. When he spoke, she found herself leaning forward. When he smiled, she caught herself smiling back.
He asked questions Jackson never had.
“What scares you, Isla?”
“Do you believe in fate?”
“If you had to choose between truth and happiness, which would you pick?”
She never answered truthfully. But he always seemed to know.
Once, she mentioned Jackson. Not by name. Just “someone I almost married.”
Caleb’s expression didn’t change, but the air around them did—thicker, quieter.
“He left,” she said, and surprised herself by laughing. “He just… didn’t show up. Like I dreamed the whole thing.”
“Maybe you did,” he said softly. “Some dreams feel like memories. Some memories are lies.”
“Are you saying I imagined him?”
“Maybe I’m saying he wasn’t meant to stay.”
She should have hated that answer. But it clung to her like a fog—unwelcome, but not unfamiliar.
One stormy evening, Isla lit the fireplace and opened the wine. Caleb had been gone three days, and something restless was building in her—the kind of need that wasn’t physical but spiritual. Like she was made of thread unraveling.
She opened her suitcase for the first time since arriving. Her wedding dress was still inside, untouched, ivory silk and lace folded with cruel precision.
On impulse, she put it on.
The mirror above the hearth caught her reflection. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the woman staring back. Pale. Hollow-eyed. A bride out of time.
Behind her, in the glass—movement.
She turned.
Nothing.
But in the mirror, he was there. Jackson. Standing just behind her, face unreadable. Not Caleb. Jackson.
She spun again. Empty room.
She screamed.
The next morning, Caleb came. He didn’t knock.
He found her on the stone steps outside the villa, barefoot in the dew, wine glass still in hand.
“You saw him,” he said without question.
She didn’t reply.
“He shouldn’t be here,” Caleb continued, sitting beside her. “But he never left.”
“What are you talking about?” she whispered.
Caleb turned to her slowly. “Jackson had a twin.”
The words hit her like cold water.
“No,” she said. “He never mentioned—”
“Because he died.”
Silence.
Caleb exhaled, looking out over the sea.
“We were born minutes apart. But Jackson… he always got there first. The better grades. The better looks. The girl.”
She stared at him, frozen.
“You’re his—?”
“His shadow,” Caleb said softly. “But only for a while.”
Isla felt her heart galloping. “That night. At the altar—”
“He didn’t run.”
“What?”
“He didn’t run,” Caleb repeated. “He disappeared.”
Caleb led her down to the cove that night, past the whispering olive trees, barefoot through the surf.
“The sea doesn’t forget,” he said. “That’s why I brought him here.”
She froze. “You what?”
His eyes gleamed. “I wanted him gone. I wanted you.”
The wind roared.
“No,” she said. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” He stepped closer. “He said he couldn’t marry you. That he’d never be free of what we were. So I made him free.”
“You killed him?”
“I freed him,” Caleb said gently. “And now he’s part of the tide. Always watching. Always waiting.”
Behind them, the waves surged higher.
Isla backed away. Her heel caught on a stone. She fell.
Caleb reached for her—but not to save her. To hold her still.
“You came here because your soul knew. You’re not grieving him. You’re finding me.”
“No—”
“Don’t you see? I’m what’s left. I’m yours now.”
She screamed.
And the sea answered.
The scream tore out of Isla, raw and primal, swallowed immediately by the crashing surf. Her foot slipped again, rocks scraping her palms as she tried to scramble back up the slope. But Caleb—not Caleb, never Caleb—grabbed her wrist with an iron grip.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “You were always meant for me. He was never enough for you. He didn’t even want to marry you.”
“That’s not true!” she cried, fighting him. “He loved me. He—”
“He feared you.”
Isla stopped struggling.
“What?”
Caleb’s lips barely moved, but his voice was everywhere—in the wind, the water, her bones. “He feared what you saw in him. What you pulled out. The light in you burned him. But I—I can carry your fire.”
“I don’t want you,” she spat. “You’re not him.”
“I know,” he whispered.
And then he kissed her.
Not a kiss of passion or longing—but of claiming. A binding kiss, like a vow made in blood.
She felt it in her teeth, her skull, her ribs. Like he was sinking into her through her mouth, pouring himself into her veins.
Isla wrenched free with a scream and struck him with the only thing she could find—a jagged piece of driftwood, wet and sharp.
He reeled backward, stunned more than hurt. A line of blood bloomed across his cheek, dark against the pallor of his skin.
“You’re stronger than him,” he murmured. “That’s why I chose you.”
“You didn’t choose me,” she said, breath ragged. “You tricked me.”
Lightning forked across the sky. Thunder shook the sand.
And behind Caleb—just beyond him, rising from the foaming black water—something moved.
A figure.
No, a shadow.
Soaked, silent, still.
Isla’s scream died in her throat as she realized what she was seeing.
Jackson.
Or what remained of him.
He looked almost human. His wedding suit hung in tattered threads from skeletal limbs. Skin like alabaster, bloated and rippled with salt. Eyes—those same eyes—fixed on her, full of sorrow.
And rage.
Caleb turned, too late.
The drowned man lunged.
They fell into the surf like puppets cut from their strings—Caleb thrashing, Jackson silent, implacable.
The sea welcomed them like a hungry god.
Isla didn’t move.
She watched them disappear beneath the waves, one brother pulling the other down into the deep, deeper, until the storm swallowed all trace of them.
The beach went still.
And Isla stood there, soaked and trembling, long after the last thunder faded.
When she finally climbed back to the villa, the world felt different—like the tide had turned in more than one way.
That night, she dreamed of hands reaching for her. One calloused and warm, the other cold and clinging. Both familiar. Both hers.
She left the villa the next morning.
No suitcase. No goodbyes.
She didn’t go home—whatever that meant now. She wandered. Italy. Croatia. Montenegro. A kind of pilgrimage, not to forget, but to remember correctly. Every shoreline whispered to her in voices not quite her own.
Sometimes she thought she saw him—Jackson, not Caleb—watching from the cliffs, beneath the waves, in the reflection of her wine glass.
And sometimes, she thought she felt Caleb, too.
Not dead. Not gone.
Just waiting.
She never returned to Kefalonia. But she heard stories.
Of strange tides.
Of wedding rings washing ashore.
Of a villa that no one would rent.
Locals said it was cursed. That a bride died there on her honeymoon. Or a groom. Or a pair of twins. The legends varied, twisted by time and salt.
But one thing remained in every version: the sea never forgets.
It was five years later when Isla received the invitation.
No address. No sender.
Just a card, cream and gold, inscribed in her own handwriting.
“The Second Vow.”
Inside: a date. A time. A place.
Midnight. The cove.
She almost threw it away.
But that night, she went.
Because of course she did.
The cove looked the same. The sea, calmer. The moon, whole.
She stood where she once fell, dressed not in white, but black.
No one waited.
And then, footsteps.
She turned.
He stood at the water’s edge.
Not Jackson. Not Caleb.
Both.
Somehow—impossibly—both.
The face she loved and feared, split down a line she couldn’t see. One eye tender, one eye cruel. One side alive. The other… ancient.
“You came,” he said.
“I had to.”
“This is the vow,” he said.
“I didn’t make a vow to you,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “You made it to both of us.”
He stepped closer. “One ran. One took his place. But you never left us, Isla.”
“I didn’t choose either of you,” she said.
He smiled. “That’s not how fate works.”
She looked down at her hands. The wedding ring had returned. Fitted perfectly. Cold as the grave.
He reached for her.
And she didn’t pull away.
Because maybe this was love.
Or maybe this was horror.
Maybe there’s no difference.
There is a story the sea tells, if you know how to listen.
Of a woman with two loves.
Of a vow made once, and broken twice.
Of a twin who drowned and one who deserved to.
Of a bride who walked willingly into the tide, smiling.
They say if you walk the cove alone at midnight, you can hear her whispering.
Or screaming.
Or singing.
But most of all—waiting.
Because she made a vow.
And some vows are deeper than death.
Submitted By – Herman J. Nord