The Gas Station Without Her
The gas station looked eerie under the fluorescent lights, still and ghostly now that the rain had eased into a mist. He parked and scanned the area. No Elise. No silhouette moving through the fog. No sound except the hum of the lights. Panic tightened in his chest.
Martin rushed inside. The young clerk behind the counter was scrolling on his phone, barely acknowledging him. “Did you see my wife?” Martin asked. “She was here. She—she must’ve walked back.”
The clerk looked up lazily. “Yeah, I saw her. She headed down the road, that way.” He motioned to the stretch of highway swallowed by trees. “Looked… pretty upset. Crying, I think.”
Martin’s blood ran cold. “She walked off? Alone?”
The clerk shrugged. “Guess so.”
Nothing about it made sense. Elise wasn’t impulsive. She wasn’t reckless. But she had been exhausted. Quiet. Defeated. And he had made her run through a storm for a joke.
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