“Will he be happy?”
I smoothed his hair.
“He’ll be very surprised.”
The train ride to Charleston took forever and no time at all.
Noah loved every minute of it. He watched bridges, fields, stations, strangers. He pressed his face to the window and asked if every church was the one where Dad’s conference was happening. I answered gently, inventing small explanations, because childhood should not have to absorb adult betrayal all at once.
But when he fell asleep with his cheek against my arm, I stopped pretending.
I watched the dark glass reflect my face back at me.
I did not look like a widow.
I looked like a woman returning from the dead.
We arrived in Charleston on Saturday morning under a sky so blue it seemed almost offensive. The city was beautiful in the way old cities can be beautiful while hiding rot behind polished doors. Pastel houses, iron balconies, church bells, horse-drawn carriages moving through streets where people came to romanticize history without asking who had been crushed beneath it.
I checked into a modest inn three blocks from the church. I dressed slowly.
Not in black.
Not in red.
I chose a deep green dress I had made for myself two years earlier and never worn because Daniel said it looked “too serious” for dinner.
Good.
I wanted serious.
