Her legs were cramped as she climbed out. Her gown was wrinkled. One side of the train was streaked with grease. Her veil hung crooked. None of it mattered anymore.
She followed Daniel down a narrow side street lined with worn duplexes and chain-link fences in a struggling part of town. The air smelled like dust, charcoal smoke, and hot pavement. Somewhere in the distance children were laughing, but this street felt suspended, like it was holding its breath.
Daniel stopped beneath a window with a bent screen.
“Look inside,” he whispered.
Savannah stepped forward and peered through.
At first her mind refused to understand what she was seeing.
Then it did.
Trent was inside.
Not as the polished groom she knew, but as a man fully at home in another life.
A woman stood in front of him wearing jeans and a faded blue blouse, beautiful in a tired, worn-down way. Beside her, a little boy—four, maybe five—clung to Trent’s leg, crying.
“Daddy, don’t go,” the child begged. “You said we’d play baseball.”
Trent crouched, smoothed the boy’s hair, and smiled with a tenderness so real it made Savannah feel sick.