The final days before my wedding should have felt like a dream. Instead, they became something else entirely — like the slow, eerie shift in a song’s key that you don’t notice at first, but then you suddenly realize something sounds wrong.

Luke and I pulled into my parents’ driveway just after five in the evening a few days before our wedding. The familiar creak of the front gate and the crunch of tires on gravel stirred up a swirl of nostalgia.

Everything about this place — the ivy on the front porch, the faint smell of roses from the garden — was home. Luke smiled at me as he put the car in park.