“Daniel,” she repeated, as if testing the word. “Are you from this neighborhood?”
“The blue building. Third floor.”
Something flickered across her face. Recognition, maybe. Or fear.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she said quietly. “My fiancé. He promised to meet me here on our wedding day.”
I glanced at the empty street. The traffic light blinked yellow over nothing.
“When was the wedding?” I asked gently.
“Over a year ago.”
The words landed strangely. She said them the way a person reads a sentence they’ve practiced too many times.
“Elena,” I said, “where do you live?”
“One street over. With my brother. He takes care of everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” she said.
A black car rolled slowly down the road across from us. Its windows were tinted dark, and the engine purred low, the kind of slow that wasn’t searching for an address.
Elena went rigid beside me.
The car paused at the corner. Then, without signaling, it sped off into the dark.
She let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped for hours.
“I should go,” she said quickly, standing.
The veil shivered around her shoulders.
“Wait,” I said. “Let me walk you. It’s late.”
She hesitated. Then she nodded, just barely.
We started down the sidewalk together, her dress whispering against the pavement. She kept her eyes on the ground.
“Why the dress?” I asked softly. “Every Friday?”
“Because if I don’t wear it,” she said, “people forget I was ever supposed to be anything else.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I just kept walking beside her.
At the corner of her street, she stopped suddenly and grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were cold and surprisingly strong.
“Daniel,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “Please. Don’t tell anyone you talked to me.”
“Why not?”
She looked past me, toward the dark windows of the houses behind us.
“He’s watching.”
And then she let go and hurried into the shadows, leaving me standing alone under a flickering streetlight, certain that whatever I had just stepped into was far bigger than a sad woman in a wedding dress.
I walked Elena to the corner of her street, but she stopped before we reached the house.
“Please,” she said, pulling her veil tighter. “If he sees you, it’ll be worse for me.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Just go. Please.”
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