It’s a Southern Gothic story about a belle who was all set to marry a guy who disappeared right before the wedding. She spent the rest of her long life as an eccentric spinster and it was not til after her death the townspeople discovered the groom was dead … and she had been sleeping next to the corpse for years.
I’m thinking Faulkner, for some reason, but that doesn’t sound QUITE right … Welty, maybe?
