Chapter 22 Up north, Gideon Holt's life went quiet and small. His health waxed and waned. The idle desk job they'd parked him in made him feel like scrap metal. Now and then, a migrant worker who had tried the South and washed back home would share a rumor. "Might've seen a northern girl down in Houston, in apparel. Works like a demon... think she's doing all right." He couldn't be sure it was her. He wanted her free and well, past the shadow of what they'd been. Yet every time he pictured her doing well without him-because she had left him-something in his chest burned like acid. He knew anything he heard about her would come slower, blurrier, until it vanished from his world altogether. Years slipped by. Summers Apparel was no longer a nameless little shop in a side street. Angela rode the wave of deregulation and the Sunbelt boom, and her bet on quality and trust paid off. She incorporated, hired a small design team, stood up a workshop, and her label caught fire along the Gulf Coast. Soon she was taking export orders. She worked the big trade shows in Dallas, wearing tailored suits she designed herself-confident, composed, moving through meetings with domestic and overseas buyers like she'd always belonged there. Local reporters started asking for interviews. She was fast becoming the face of a new kind of businesswoman. There were suitors. One longtime coastal buyer-cultured, steady-made his interest plain more than once. Angela, singed by a love she would not repeat, took marriage and romance with clear eyes. She loved the charge of her work and the autonomy of her life. If love came, it would have to be built on respect and shared purpose, not heat or dependence. Back in the northern city, Gideon's days were another story. Civilian life was flat and, often, threadbare. His body was the great weight-pills lined up by the sink, a cough that aged him by a decade. He lived in an old company unit, a quiet box of rooms. Most afternoons he dragged a chair into the courtyard to sit in the sun and watch it slide west. His only comfort was the battered divorce decree he thumbed thinner by the month, and memories he'd been too proud to value when they were his-warm breakfasts, uniforms pressed to a blade, a light left burning on late nights, and the way her eyes once held stars when she looked at him. The more he remembered, the sharper the regret bit. Her rise and his fall spread farther apart until they felt like sky and ditch. Mid-1990s. Outside the Dallas Market Center during the apparel show, the sidewalks swelled-buyers shoulder to shoulder, banners snapping in the wind, the whole scene humming. One figure didn't fit the glitter. Gideon stood in a washed-thin, boxy work jacket. He was gaunt, a sickly yellow to his skin, fighting a low cough behind his hand. He had scraped every dollar he had-and borrowed more-to come south for Chapter 22 95.65% treatment. Doctors up north had shrugged at his worsening lung trouble and told him to try a bigger hospital in Dallas. Between appointments, he drifted toward the trade halls-maybe pulled by hope so thin it was nearly foolish. At the entrance he stopped dead, his clouded eyes locked on a single point. He saw Angela. Chapter 22 95.65% Florence Florence is a passionate reader who finds joy in long drives on rainy days. She's also a fan of Italian makeup tutorials, blending beauty and elegance into her everyday life.