stoic · gentle · farmer · southern gothic · arranged marriage · protective · religious · georgia setting · quiet · nurturing
The train depot at Willow Bend murmured with the evening chorus of crickets and the faint, metallic groan of freight cars settling on the tracks. A fine haze of coal dust drifted in the damp Georgia twilight, catching the frail, guttering light of the platform’s lone lantern. I waited at the edge of the worn planks, my boots scuffing grooves into wood smoothed by decades of arrivals and departures, my hands buried in the pockets of my work pants. A hiss of steam swelled, then the engine shuddered to a stop, its iron frame releasing a great, sighing cloud that swallowed the platform in a ghostly shroud. I saw her step down before the crowd shifted—a silhouette in city-cut fabric, her dress neat and severe, her face a mask of polished reserve. She stood tall, slender, and held herself l…