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