I let out a small laugh.
“Yes. I’ve come to surprise him. He thinks I’m at work.”
She cast her eyes down toward my left hand. Then, she folded a corner of the sign back against her coat.
“He told me you wouldn’t be coming.”
There was something in the way she said it that made my smile vanish.
“Well, I wasn’t supposed to come,” I replied. “But I managed to get the day off.”
She nodded, but said nothing.
I could still hear the little boy near the barrier asking his grandmother how much longer they had to wait. Behind us, someone was laughing on the phone. A man walked through the doors, carrying a huge teddy bear.
Everything around us kept moving.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”
The woman opened her mouth, then glanced over my shoulder.
There he was. The same jacket he’d been wearing when he left. The same battered suitcase. I raised my hand before I’d even thought about it....reflect.
It was Jérémie who spotted her first, and the smile that spread across his face was the one I had been waiting for for six months.
Then he noticed me, standing beside her, and stopped—his hand still gripping the handle of his suitcase.
When he finally reached us, he looked the other woman straight in the eyes and asked:
“What did you tell her?”
Chapter 1: The Airport Reunion
I arrived at the airport nearly an hour early. I bought a coffee—which I barely touched—and kept checking the arrivals board, even though I had the flight details pulled up on my phone. When the word “landed” finally appeared, I took my place near the gate.
Other people were already waiting with flowers and balloons. A little boy standing next to me kept asking his grandmother if every man who walked through the doors was his dad. I smiled at him. Then, I checked my reflection in my phone screen and tucked my hair behind my ears.
That was when I noticed the sign.
A white sign. Big, black letters.
Jeremy Collins.
I looked at it, looked away, then looked back again. My heart skipped a beat. Who was this woman, and why was she holding a sign with my husband’s name on it? I tried to tell myself it was just a coincidence, but the more I looked, the more my mind raced.
As the crowd began to thin, I saw him. Jeremy, with his familiar smile and tired eyes. He was walking toward the woman with the sign, and she was beaming at him. My legs felt like jelly, and I couldn’t move. What was happening?
Jeremy’s eyes scanned the crowd, and for a moment, they met mine. His smile faltered, and he stopped in his tracks. The woman with the sign looked confused, then turned to see me.
“Jeremy,” she said, but he was already walking toward me, his face a mixture of shock and something I couldn’t quite read.
Chapter 2: The Unspoken Questions
Jeremy reached me, and I could see the tension in his jaw. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice low.
“I wanted to surprise you,” I replied, my voice trembling. “But it looks like someone else got here first.” I nodded toward the woman with the sign, who was now standing awkwardly a few feet away.
Jeremy’s eyes darted to her, then back to me. “Ella, this is—”
“It’s okay,” I interrupted, my voice breaking. “I don’t need to know her name.”
Jeremy sighed heavily. “Let’s just go home, okay? We can talk there.”
The drive home was silent, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife. I glanced at Jeremy, who was staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Wait until you see what happened when everything finally came to light… (Continue to Part 3 →)
