We were halfway home from dinner when the traffic stopped. Not slowed. Stopped.
Red taillights stretched ahead like a glowing ribbon into the distance, and the hum of idling engines filled the air. I leaned my head against the window, the glass cool against my temple. It had been one of those days — the kind where you feel like you’ve been carrying the weight of the world in your shoulders — so when the car stayed still for more than ten minutes, my body decided it had had enough.
I closed my eyes for “just a minute.”
When I opened them, something felt… wrong.
The light through the windshield wasn’t the sharp white of headlights anymore — it was soft, pale, almost golden. Dawn.
I sat up quickly, my back aching from the awkward angle I’d slept in. The highway was gone. No endless lines of brake lights. No rows of impatient drivers drumming their fingers on the steering wheel. Instead, we were parked in front of a tiny gas station with a single rusted pump, tucked between a hardware store and a shop with dusty windows.
I was still trying to make sense of it when I saw my husband walking toward the car. He had two steaming paper cups in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. He smiled like this was the most normal thing in the world.
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