Judith put her hand over his.
“Then we drive,” she said. “It’s fourteen hours.”
“Then we leave now.”
Gerald looked at her. Something passed between them—not words, not even a decision. More like a surrender. The kind that happens when you finally stop fighting the thing you already know is true.
At three in the morning, Gerald backed his pickup out of the driveway and Judith climbed in with a thermos of coffee and the gold box rewrapped by Martha before she left.
They pulled onto Route 31 heading west.
They didn’t call ahead. Didn’t text.
They just drove.
The odometer turned over mile after mile in the dark.
Ohio. Indiana. Illinois. Nebraska. Wyoming. Utah. Colorado.
Fourteen hours.
At that exact moment, I was 30,000 feet in the air, flying home, staring at the empty seat next to me where a gold-wrapped box used to be.
Tommy was waiting at Denver International when I walked out of the terminal. He didn’t ask how it went.
He could see it on my face.
He just picked up my bag, put his arm around my shoulders, and walked me to the truck.
We drove home in silence.
Not the uncomfortable kind.
The kind where someone loves you enough to know that words would only make it heavier.
When we got inside, I sat down on the couch. I didn’t take off my jacket. I didn’t turn on the lights.
I just sat there in the dark living room while Tommy locked the front door and put the kettle on.
Then it hit me.
Not slowly. Not like a wave building.
Like a wall falling.
I pressed my face into the throw pillow and cried in a way I hadn’t cried since I was a child—loud, graceless, shaking.
Tommy sat beside me. He put his hand on my back, and he didn’t say a word.
Not it’s okay. Not they don’t deserve you. Not any of the things people say when they don’t know what else to offer.
He just stayed.
After a long time, I sat up, wiped my face with my sleeve, and turned off my phone.
I didn’t want to hear from anyone in Ohio.
Not tonight. Not yet.
The next morning, I did what I always do.
Got up at five. Made coffee. Sat on the front porch in my bathrobe with the mug warm in my hands, watching the Denver sky lighten from black to gray to blue.
Was I wrong to go? Was I wrong to hope?
I kept turning it over like a stone in my pocket I couldn’t stop touching.
And then—at exactly 6:07 a.m.—I heard a car pull up.
I didn’t recognize the truck at first.
A dusty white pickup, road grime on the fenders, Ohio plates.
It parked crooked against the curb like whoever was driving had stopped in a hurry.
The engine ticked in the morning quiet.
