The first tear fell. Then the second. Jeanine wiped them away angrily, but more kept coming.

“You get one condition.”

“You’re late,” she said.

She was thinking about home—and how, for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to find it alone.

And somewhere over the Mississippi River, the last firework of the night faded into smoke, and the city let out a collective sigh—another year over, another just beginning.