Marcus got home first, which meant the rice was already going when Elena came through the door with her laptop bag still on her shoulder and a plastic bag of mail she'd grabbed from the box.

"There's another thing from the dentist," she said, dropping the bag on the counter. "I think they've sent us four of these."

"Because you never call them back."

"Because they call during meetings." She kicked off her flats by the closet and came into the kitchen, peering into the pot. "Is that the jasmine or the brown?"

"Jasmine. We're out of brown."

"We're out of a lot." She opened the fridge and stood there in the cold light, one hand on the door. "There's chicken thighs, that squash from Sunday, and half a bag of spinach that's going slimy."

"Squash is fine. I'll cut it."

She handed him the squash and took the chicken to the sink. The window over it had gone dark early, the way it did in November, and she could see the neighbor's porch light through the branches.

"Terrence asked if we're doing anything for Thanksgiving," Marcus said, halving the squash with the big knife and scooping seeds into the compost bin. "I said probably your mom's."

"It's probably my mom's."

"That's what I said."

Elena patted the chicken dry with paper towels and salted it heavily, the way he liked. "Did you take the trash out? It's Wednesday."

"I'll do it after."

"You'll forget."

"I'll do it after."

She smiled a little and didn't push it. The oven beeped that it had reached temperature. She slid the sheet pan in, set a timer on her phone, and leaned back against the counter while he tipped the squash cubes into a bowl with oil.

"Long day?" he asked.

"Not bad. Boring." She reached over and stole a piece of raw squash. "Yours?"

"Boring's good," he said, and turned the rice down.


Marcus got home first, which meant he was the one who noticed the chicken was still frozen solid in the sink where he'd left it that morning under a trickle of cold water that had, apparently, gone lukewarm and useless.

"We're not eating that," he said when Dana came through the side door, shrugging out of her coat, her lanyard still around her neck.

She looked at the chicken. "What happened?"

"I forgot to check the tap. It was barely running."

Dana set her bag on the chair that always held bags, never people, and opened the freezer. "There's the ground turkey. And I think we have half a box of rotini."

"Tacos?"

"With rotini?"

"With tortillas. There were tortillas."

There were tortillas, four of them, slightly stiff at the edges. Dana wrapped them in a damp paper towel while Marcus broke up the turkey in the skillet with the side of a wooden spoon. The kitchen filled with that particular smell of cumin hitting hot oil, and the exhaust fan rattled the way it had since they moved in six years ago.

"Kayla called about Thanksgiving," Dana said. "She wants to know if we're doing it here or if her mom is."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said I'd ask you, which is code for I'd like it to be her mom's."

Marcus laughed. "Then it's her mom's."

She grated cheddar into a bowl and ate a pinch of it, then another. He asked her to hand him the paprika, and she found it behind the cornstarch, which was behind nothing in particular, because the cabinet had no system.

They ate at the counter standing up, which they always swore they wouldn't do, plates balanced on the edge, the thawing chicken forgotten in the sink until Dana pointed at it with her fork.

"Tomorrow," Marcus said.

"Tomorrow," she agreed, and reached for the last tortilla.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came in through the garage, dropping her bag on the bench by the door.

"You're early," Marcus said. He was standing at the cutting board with a bell pepper, the knife making that hollow thunk against plastic.

"Meeting got canceled. Sandra's kid has strep." Dana kicked off her shoes and left them askew, the way she always did, the way Marcus had stopped commenting on around year three. "Is that the chicken from Sunday?"

"It's fine. I smelled it."

"That's not a food safety guideline, honey."

"It's Thursday. Sunday to Thursday is fine." He scraped the peppers into the pan, and the oil hissed. "There's a bag of frozen broccoli if you want to feel better about it."

She got the broccoli out, then stood there holding the bag while she read a text. Marcus reached around her for the soy sauce, and she shifted her hip half an inch without looking up.

"Your mom wants to know about Thanksgiving," she said.

"What'd you tell her?"

"I told her you'd call."

"Dana."

"I'm not lying to your mother about our travel plans. That's a spousal privilege I'm declining." She dumped the broccoli in, and steam went up in a cloud. "Also we do need to decide."

"After dinner."

"You always say after dinner."

"And then we discuss it after dinner, and it's very productive." He tasted the sauce off a spoon, made a face, added more vinegar. "Grab the plates? Not the good ones."

"There are only the good ones. The others broke."

"Then grab the ones that exist."

She set the table, two plates and two forks and the paper towel roll in the middle because they were out of napkins again. The kitchen window had gone dark and reflected them both back, moving around each other in the small space, not touching much, not needing to.


Marcus got home first, which meant he was the one who noticed the sink still held the breakfast dishes. He rolled his sleeves and ran the water hot, and by the time the front door opened again he had the cutting board out and two chicken breasts thawing under a stream from the tap.

"Traffic on the parkway," Denise said, dropping her bag on the bench by the door. "There was a stalled truck by the exit. I sat in the same spot for eleven minutes. I timed it."

"Very productive use of eleven minutes."

"I listened to a podcast about volcanoes." She kicked off her shoes and came into the kitchen, peering over his shoulder. "Are we doing the rice or the potatoes?"

"Rice. The potatoes are getting eyes."

"They've had eyes since Sunday." She pulled the bag from the pantry, held it up, made a face, and set it back down. "I'll deal with it tomorrow."

They moved around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the ease of eleven years, Denise reaching past him for the measuring cup, Marcus stepping back without looking. She put on the radio, the classical station, low. The chicken hit the pan and hissed.

"Your mother called the house phone," she said. "I didn't pick up. She left a whole message about the reunion."

"I'll call her Saturday."

"You said that last Saturday."

"And I meant it last Saturday." He turned the chicken with tongs. "Is there any of that mustard left? The grainy one?"

Denise found it behind the pickles, checked the date, handed it over. She set two plates on the counter, then two forks, then remembered the paper towels were out and went to the garage for more.

When she came back the rice was done and the windows had fogged a little at the corners. They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side, and Denise told him about the volcanoes.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, and Marcus made a mental note to buy bulbs, the same note he'd made Tuesday.

"Did you get the chicken out this morning?" Priya asked, dropping her bag on the chair by the door and pulling off her cardigan.

"It's been thawing since seven."

"You're a saint."

"I'm a man who didn't want to eat cereal again." He was already halfway through an onion, the cutting board slick with juice. "How was the audit thing?"

"Postponed. Which means it'll land the same week as my mother's visit, obviously." She washed her hands at the sink, then reached past him for the colander. "Rice or those little potatoes?"

"Potatoes. The rice bag is basically empty and I refuse to make three-quarters of a cup of rice."

"Bold stance."

She halved the potatoes without measuring anything, tossing them with oil and too much salt, the way he liked. The oven had been preheating since he got home, which was fifteen minutes earlier than her, a small daily advantage he leveraged mostly for control of the radio. NPR was mid-sentence about something in Ohio.

"Oh—Dana texted," Priya said. "They want to do brunch Sunday."

"Which Dana?"

"Work Dana. Not tall Dana."

"Can we say yes and then decide Saturday night?"

"That's what I already told her."

The chicken went into the pan and complained loudly. Marcus stepped back from the spatter, and Priya, passing behind him, put her hand flat between his shoulder blades for a second, no particular reason.

They ate at the counter because the table had mail on it. Neither of them mentioned the mail. Halfway through, Priya said the potatoes were better than last time, and Marcus said it was because she'd stopped being scared of the oven, and she kicked his foot lightly under the stool.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and the light flickered again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose the music. She put on something with a lot of piano in it and turned it down low, because Marcus had said last week that the kitchen speaker made everything sound like it was coming from inside a coffee can.

She had the chicken thighs out of the fridge and patted dry by the time the front door opened.

"It's freezing," Marcus said, and then, "Did we get a package?"

"On the bench. I think it's your brackets."

He came into the kitchen still wearing his coat, opened the fridge, closed it, and stood there. "There's no beer."

"You drank the beer."

"I drank one beer."

"Then a ghost drank the rest." She scooted over so he could reach the sink. "There's that seltzer thing you don't like."

He took one anyway and cracked it open. "What are we doing?"

"Chicken. And that rice, if you want to start it. And I bought green beans but they look sad."

Marcus picked up the bag and inspected it with real skepticism. "These are fine. They're just bendy."

"That's the definition of sad, for a green bean."

He rinsed them anyway and started snapping the ends off, dropping them into a colander, while the rice cooker clicked and hissed behind him. Dana got the oven going and told him about the thing with her manager and the spreadsheet nobody had asked her to make, and he made the right noises at the right times and said, "So does she know it was you?" and Dana said, "That's what I keep asking."

The chicken went in. Marcus set the timer on his phone because the oven timer had a sound that made the dog hide.

"We should figure out Saturday," he said.

"Can we figure it out after we eat?"

"Yeah," he said, and got the plates down.


The garage door groaned shut at 5:40, and Marcus came in with a plastic bag of groceries hooked over one wrist, still holding his phone to his ear.

"No, tell him Tuesday," he said. "Tuesday. Because Monday I've got the thing with the inspectors." He hung up and set the bag on the counter, where Priya was already halfway through a bag of shredded carrots.

"You got the sour cream?"

"I got the sour cream." He held it up like evidence. "And they were out of the good tortillas, so I got the ones you don't like."

"They're fine. They're just chalky." She wiped her hands on a dish towel that had seen better decades and reached past him for the cutting board. "How was the drive?"

"Ninety-four was a parking lot. Somebody's boat came off a trailer."

"A boat."

"On a Wednesday."

He put the ground turkey in the pan and turned it up too high, the way he always did, and she reached over without comment and turned it down two clicks. He let her. Twelve years in, they'd stopped narrating that part.

"Your sister called the house phone," she said. "Which means she couldn't reach your cell."

"I was in the meeting."

"I told her that. She wants to know about Thanksgiving."

Marcus broke up the meat with the flat of the spatula. "It's September."

"I'm reporting, not advocating."

The kitchen filled with cumin and the sound of the dog reorganizing herself under the table, hoping. Priya set out plates, the mismatched ones, because the good ones were still in the dishwasher from Sunday. Outside, a neighbor's leaf blower started up and stopped.

"Rice or no rice?" she asked.

"No rice. I had a big lunch."

"You always say that and then you eat mine."

"That's why I don't get my own," he said, and she laughed, and they sat down at the table while it was still light out.


Marcus got home first, which meant he was the one who had to deal with the chicken. He'd forgotten to move it from the freezer that morning, so he set the package in a bowl of cool water and stood there a minute, coat still on, thinking about whether that counted as thawing or just guilt.

Priya came in at six-twenty, dropping her keys in the dish by the door. "It's raining sideways," she said. "My whole left side is soaked."

"There's a towel in the dryer."

She came back into the kitchen with her hair pulled up, still in her work clothes minus the shoes. "Chicken?"

"It's getting there." He was chopping an onion badly, the pieces uneven. "Julian's dad emailed about the carpool thing."

"The Thursday switch?"

"He wants Tuesdays now. Because of soccer."

Priya opened the fridge and considered it. "We have half a bag of that spinach that's about to turn. And rice."

"Do it."

She rinsed the spinach in the colander while he moved the onion into the pan. The kitchen was small enough that they had a rhythm about it, stepping around each other without really looking, the way people do after eleven years. He turned the heat up too high and she reached over and turned it down without comment.

"Tuesdays is fine," she said. "Tuesday I'm in the office anyway."

"I told him I'd check with you first."

"Good answer."

The chicken had thawed enough on the outside that he could cut into it, and he did, piece by piece, while she started the rice cooker and wiped the counter where the onion skins had scattered. The window over the sink had fogged.

"Do we have any of that lemon left?" she asked.

"Might be in the door."

There was, half of one, wrapped in plastic and slightly hard. She squeezed it over the spinach anyway.


Marcus got home first, which meant the radio was already on when Priya came through the door, kicking off her flats and dropping her bag on the bench they'd bought at an estate sale two summers ago.

"There's chicken thighs thawed," he called from the kitchen. "But I didn't know what you wanted with them."

"Anything that isn't rice." She came in and leaned against the counter. "We had rice three nights."

"That's because you like rice."

"I like rice on Monday. Not Monday through Thursday."

He laughed and pulled the cast iron down from the hook. Priya opened the fridge and stood there in the cold light, doing inventory out loud: half a bag of green beans, a lemon going soft, sour cream from the tacos.

"Beans and potatoes," she decided. "There are those little red ones in the pantry."

"Are they still good? I feel like we've had those since April."

She checked, found two sprouting, tossed them in the compost bin under the sink, and started scrubbing the rest. Marcus salted the chicken and let it sit while he crushed garlic with the flat of the knife, the way his mother did it.

"Ruth called," Priya said. "Your sister. About Thanksgiving."

"What'd you tell her?"

"I told her you'd call back, because I'm not deciding whose house."

"Coward."

"Absolutely."

The oil started to shimmer and he laid the thighs in skin-side down. The kitchen filled with that hard, bright sizzle, and for a minute neither of them talked. Priya trimmed the beans, dropping the ends into a bowl. Marcus reached past her for the pepper, kissed her shoulder without particular ceremony, and went back to the stove.

"Did you pay the water bill?"

"Saturday."

"Okay. Just checking."

They ate at the small table with the mail still on it, moved to one side, and talked about nothing that either of them remembered by morning.


The kitchen smelled like garlic before Marcus even set down his bag.

"You started without me," he said, loosening his tie.

Priya glanced up from the cutting board. "You said six-thirty. It's six-forty."

"Traffic on the parkway. Someone's mattress fell off a truck." He kissed the top of her head and opened the fridge, staring into it the way he always did, as if the answer might rearrange itself. "Do we have any of that yogurt sauce left?"

"You finished it Sunday. With chips."

"That was a low moment." He found the half-empty bottle of wine and poured two glasses without asking. Priya took hers, drank, and went back to the zucchini.

The chicken thighs were already in the oven, skin-side up, the pan hissing faintly. Marcus washed his hands and started on the rice, measuring water with the side of his finger the way his mother did, which Priya had stopped questioning years ago because it always came out right.

"Your sister called," she said. "She wants to know if we're doing Thanksgiving here or at your parents'."

"It's September."

"Tell her that, not me."

He laughed. "Did you say anything?"

"I said we'd talk about it." She scraped the zucchini into a bowl, salted it, went looking for the olive oil, found it behind the vinegar where it did not belong. "Also the dishwasher's making that noise again."

"The grinding noise or the whining noise?"

"The one that sounds like it's thinking about it."

"I'll look tomorrow." He wouldn't, probably, not until Saturday, and they both knew that, and it was fine.

The oven timer went off. Priya pulled the pan out while Marcus cleared the mail off the table — a catalog, an insurance letter, a postcard from their dentist. They sat down across from each other, the overhead light too bright, the window behind Marcus gone dark and reflecting the room back at them.

"This is good," he said.

"You made the rice."

"I know."


The rice cooker clicked to warm just as Priya walked in, keys still in hand, coat half off. Daniel was at the stove with his sleeves shoved up, poking at something in the cast iron.

"You started without me," she said.

"You said seven. It's seven-twenty."

"Traffic on Halsted was a parking lot." She hung her coat on the back of a chair instead of the hook, which she knew he'd notice and not mention. "What is that?"

"Chicken thighs. The ones from Sunday, before they turned."

She leaned over his shoulder. The skin was going gold in the fat, and he'd thrown in half an onion, sliced thick because he never sliced anything thin. "Did you salt them?"

"I salted them."

"Both sides?"

"Priya."

"I'm asking a question." She opened the fridge, moved a yogurt container, found the bag of green beans she'd bought Thursday and had been meaning to use. "These are still okay. I think."

"Smell them."

"They're beans. They don't smell like anything." She rinsed them in the colander anyway and started snapping the ends off over the sink, dropping the tips into the compost bin that needed emptying. "Your mom called me. At work."

"About the thing in August."

"About the thing in August. She wants an answer."

Daniel turned the thighs one at a time with the tongs, and the pan hissed. "Tell her yes. It's three days."

"It's four, with the drive."

"Tell her yes anyway. I'll drive both ways."

She looked at him for a second, then went back to the beans. "You'll fall asleep by Toledo."

"I have never fallen asleep driving."

"You've come close."

The rice cooker sighed steam. Priya slid the beans into a pan with butter and a lid, and Daniel moved over so she could reach the burner, and for a while neither of them said anything, which was fine. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped.

"Plates or bowls?" he asked.

"Bowls," she said. "I don't want to do dishes."


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Daniel came in from the garage, still holding his laptop bag like he'd forgotten to set it down.

"Traffic on 35 again?" Priya asked. She was standing at the stove, pushing sliced peppers around a pan with a wooden spoon.

"There was a stalled truck by the exit. Everybody in the right lane decided it was a personal insult." He set the bag on a kitchen chair, then moved it to the floor when she glanced at it. "What are we doing?"

"Chicken and peppers. The chicken's been in the fridge since Sunday, so it's tonight or it's the trash."

"Bold. I like it." He washed his hands, dried them on the towel hanging off the oven handle, and opened the fridge. "We have half a lime."

"Use it."

He squeezed it over the pan and she made a small noise of approval. From the living room came the sound of the TV, which neither of them had turned on and neither of them turned off.

"Your mom called," Priya said. "She wants to know about Thanksgiving."

"It's September."

"I'm telling you what she said. She's already talking about who's driving."

Daniel got two plates down, and then the salt, which she'd asked for last night and he'd forgotten. "Tell her we'll come Thursday, leave Saturday."

"You tell her. It's your mother, and she'll ask me questions I can't answer, like whether you still eat sweet potatoes."

"I do."

"I know that. I'm saying she asks like it's a test."

The pan hissed. Priya turned off the burner and moved it to a cold one. Daniel scooped rice, tapping the spoon against the bowl twice out of habit, and they sat at the small table by the window, where the blinds were still open to the dark yard.

"It's good," he said.

"It's fine," she said, and ate it anyway.


Marisol got home first, which meant the radio came on before the lights did. She kicked her shoes toward the closet, missed, and left them where they landed.

By the time Danny came in, she had the chicken thighs out of the fridge and was patting them dry with a paper towel.

"Traffic on the parkway," he said, hanging his keys on the hook. "There was a guy standing in the median with a leaf blower. Just standing there."

"Doing what?"

"Blowing leaves. In the median. Where cars are." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, bumping her hip with his to make room. "How was the thing with Priya?"

"Moved to Thursday." She salted the chicken. "Can you do the potatoes? There's that bag from the farmers market, the little ones."

He found the bag behind the milk and started halving potatoes on the cutting board, the one with the deep knife scar down the middle that neither of them could remember making. Marisol got the cast iron heating and it began to whisper.

"We're out of olive oil," he said, shaking the bottle. "The good stuff, anyway. There's like a teaspoon."

"There's a backup in the pantry. Behind the rice."

"Behind the rice," he repeated, and found it. "How do you know where everything is?"

"Because I put it there."

The oven beeped. He slid the sheet pan in, then leaned against the counter with his arms crossed while she got the chicken skin-side down in the pan. It hissed and spat and she jerked her hand back.

"Splatter screen," he said.

"I know where it is."

"That's not the same as using it."

She flicked water at him from the sink. He got the plates down, two, plus the mismatched blue bowl, and set the table while the kitchen filled with the smell of it. Outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope in her cramped handwriting, but Peter was the one who kept it in his shirt pocket, pulling it out at the end of every aisle like a man checking a compass.

"We already have paprika," he said.

"We have smoked paprika. That's different."

"It's the same red powder."

Dana took the jar out of his hand and put it in the cart anyway. They had been married eleven years, and this was a conversation they'd had, in various forms, perhaps two hundred times.

The Kroger on Baxter was crowded for ten in the morning. A woman with a toddler blocked the cereal aisle entirely, apologizing without moving. Peter maneuvered around her, and Dana followed with the bananas, checking each bunch for bruising the way her mother had taught her.

They had already been to the hardware store for a furnace filter and a box of drywall anchors, and to the dry cleaner, where the girl at the counter couldn't find Peter's gray suit until Dana suggested checking under Dana's own maiden name, which was, inexplicably, how it had been tagged.

At the register, Peter bagged while Dana paid. He was particular about it—cold with cold, bread on top, nothing crushed. The cashier watched him with mild interest.

"You forgot coffee," Dana said in the parking lot.

Peter stopped with his hand on the trunk. "No. I got the whole bean."

"That's decaf."

He looked at the bag. It was decaf.

"I'll go back," she said, and did, while he loaded the car and moved it up to the fire lane and put on the hazards. She came out four minutes later holding the right bag, and he leaned across to open her door because the handle on the passenger side had been sticking since March, and neither of them had gotten around to fixing it.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Winston Road, squinting at her handwriting.

"Is that 'kale' or 'kaiser rolls'?"

"Kale," she said. "You wrote it."

"I wrote it, but you dictated it while brushing your teeth."

They took a cart with a wobbling front wheel because Dana said the good ones were all outside in the corral and she wasn't walking back. Inside, the store had that Saturday-morning density, families blocking the produce aisle, someone's toddler shrieking about a balloon. Marcus bagged apples while Dana held her phone up to compare the price per ounce of two brands of coffee.

"The store brand is a dollar sixty cheaper."

"The store brand tastes like a campfire."

"It tastes fine."

He put the more expensive bag in the cart anyway, and she didn't take it out, which was how most of these conversations ended.

They split up near the middle of the store. She went for laundry detergent and paper towels; he doubled back for the sour cream he'd forgotten. When they found each other again by the dairy case she had also acquired a bag of frozen dumplings that had not been on the receipt.

"For lunch," she said.

Checkout took eleven minutes behind a woman paying with three separate cards. In the car, Dana sorted the receipt against her mental tally while Marcus backed out slowly around a man loading a case of water.

They still had to drop off the recycling and pick up his prescription, and the gutters needed cleaning before the rain came Tuesday. But first they drove home with the windows cracked, and Marcus carried in four bags at once so he wouldn't have to make a second trip, which Dana told him, as she always did, was going to break his fingers one day.


The list was Dana's idea, written on the back of a receipt in the car while Marcus circled the parking lot looking for a space that wasn't halfway to the highway.

"Milk, eggs, that bread you like," she read. "The seedy one."

"The seedy one has a name."

"It has a name I can't pronounce, so it's the seedy one."

Inside, Marcus took the cart because he always took the cart, steering it with one hand while Dana walked ahead, checking prices with the particular squint she got when she'd forgotten her reading glasses again. They disagreed about tomatoes for a while — she wanted the vine ones, he pointed out they'd bought vine tomatoes last week and half of them had gone soft in the drawer. They bought the vine ones anyway.

In the cereal aisle, Dana ran into a woman she knew from the dental office where she worked, and Marcus stood a polite distance away, pretending to compare granolas, until the conversation wound down. He'd learned not to hover. She'd learned not to make it long.

They forgot the eggs and had to double back. At the register, the card reader wouldn't take Marcus's chip, and he had to swipe twice while the man behind them sighed audibly, and Dana raised her eyebrows at Marcus in a way that meant *don't say anything*, and he didn't.

Afterward they stopped at the hardware store for furnace filters, which took four minutes, and then at the dry cleaner, which was closed, which Dana had suspected and Marcus had insisted was not the case.

"Saturdays until two," she said, reading the sign.

"It used to be four."

"It hasn't been four since we moved here."

At home he carried in the heavy bags and she put things away, and the tomatoes went in the drawer, where they would probably go soft.


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of weather that made staying in bed feel like a moral victory. Dana got up anyway at seven-thirty, because the dog needed walking and because she'd promised herself she'd get the kitchen floor mopped before noon.

Miguel emerged around eight, hair flattened on one side, and started the coffee without being asked. "We're out of the good beans," he announced. "This is the emergency stuff from the back of the cabinet."

"Add it to the list."

The list lived on the refrigerator, held by a magnet shaped like Ohio, a souvenir from a wedding neither of them fully remembered. By nine they'd added paper towels, chicken thighs, whatever vegetable looked decent, and a birthday card for Miguel's aunt.

They took her car because his was making a sound he'd been ignoring for three weeks. First stop was the hardware store for furnace filters and a new washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since February. Miguel wandered off toward the paint chips and came back holding two nearly identical swatches of gray.

"For what room?"

"I don't know. The hallway, maybe."

"Put them back."

The grocery store was crowded with people who'd had the same idea about beating the afternoon rush. Dana took the cart; Miguel took the list. They split up at the produce section by unspoken agreement and reconvened near the dairy case, where he presented her with a container of the yogurt she liked and a bag of pretzels he'd clearly grabbed for himself.

At the checkout, the total was thirty dollars more than either of them expected, which was true nearly every week.

They unloaded the bags at home, and Miguel started on the faucet while Dana finally mopped the floor. The dripping stopped around two. Neither of them mentioned it, but they both noticed the quiet.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because she'd said if she held it she'd lose it in the car door pocket like last time.

They took the Corolla. The morning had that late-October gray to it, not raining but considering it. Their first stop was the dry cleaner's on Franklin, where Marcus ran in for his blue suit while Dana idled at the curb, watching a man walk a beagle that refused to move past a particular hydrant.

"They charged me nine dollars," Marcus said, getting back in.

"For one suit?"

"For one suit. She said something about the lining."

At the hardware store they bought furnace filters, a two-pack, and Dana talked him out of a shop vac they did not need and could not store. In the parking lot she checked her phone and said her sister had texted about Thanksgiving. Marcus said they should decide before her mother decided for them.

The grocery store was crowded, as it always was on Saturdays after ten, which they both knew and both continued to forget. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus read from the list and made small unilateral additions—pretzel thins, a jar of the expensive olives—which Dana permitted with a look. They disagreed briefly about the yogurt. She wanted the plain tub; he wanted the individual cups because he ate them at his desk. They bought both.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes for a half pound of turkey. Marcus leaned on the cart handle. Dana said, "We forgot the coffee."

"It's on the list."

"It's on the list, but we're past aisle four."

So they doubled back, which put them behind a woman comparing two brands of canned tomatoes with real seriousness, and Marcus, who had been irritable all morning about the suit, found he didn't mind waiting.

At home they carried the bags in together, two trips, and left the filters in the trunk.


The Saturday list had been on the refrigerator since Wednesday, held up by a magnet shaped like a lobster that neither of them remembered buying. By ten, Dana had crossed off two items and added three.

"We need coffee filters," she said, pulling on her sneakers by the door.

Miguel was already outside, wrestling the recycling bin to the curb. Through the window she watched him stop, crouch, and pick something out of the grass — a plastic fork, it turned out, which he held up accusingly when he came back in.

"The neighbors' party," he said.

"You don't know that."

"I know that."

They took his car because hers was making the noise again, the one they had agreed to deal with next month. At the hardware store Miguel spent eleven minutes in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical rubber gaskets while Dana looked at houseplants she had no intention of buying. He bought the cheaper gasket. On the way out he said he'd probably bought the wrong one.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts backing into each other near the bakery. Dana pushed; Miguel walked ahead and doubled back with things. They disagreed about yogurt — she wanted the big tub, he wanted the little cups for lunches — and settled it by buying both. He forgot the coffee filters. She remembered at the register, and he jogged back for them while the cashier waited, and Dana apologized to the woman behind her, who said she'd done the same thing last week.

At home they carried the bags in together, four trips. Miguel put away the cold things while Dana broke down the cardboard. The gasket sat on the counter in its little bag.

"After lunch," he said.

"After lunch," she agreed, and went to find the vacuum.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in his cramped block letters: BATTERIES, COFFEE FILTERS, THE GOOD BREAD, NOT THE CHEAP ONE.

"You underlined 'not,'" Dana said in the car. "Twice."

"Because last time you bought the cheap one."

"It was on sale."

"It tasted like a sponge."

They stopped at the hardware store first because it closed at noon on Saturdays, and Marcus needed a washer for the bathroom faucet that had been dripping since Tuesday. He held two of them up in the aisle, squinting, and Dana pointed out that he'd brought the old one in his pocket for exactly this reason. He fished it out, embarrassed, and matched it, and they were out in six minutes.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana pushed the cart while Marcus went off for produce and came back with a bag of apples she hadn't asked for.

"They were three ninety-nine."

"For how many?"

"I didn't count."

She let it go. They moved down the aisles in their usual pattern, him drifting, her steering, the two of them reconvening at the ends of rows. He put the good bread in the cart with a small flourish. She added tortillas, chicken thighs, a jar of the mustard his mother liked, because his mother was coming in two weeks and Dana had already started preparing.

At the register, the total came out higher than either of them expected, which it always did. Marcus loaded the bags while Dana dug for the car keys she found in her coat pocket, where they had been the whole time.

At home they put things away, mostly in the right places. Then Marcus went to fix the faucet, and Dana heard him swearing at it, gently, from down the hall.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in her small, slanted handwriting. David drove because he always drove, and Priya read the list aloud at stoplights so they could argue about it.

"Do we need cilantro? You never use the cilantro."

"I use it. You throw it out before I use it."

At the store, they split up the way they always did — David to produce and the aisles, Priya to the back for meat and dairy, then meeting somewhere near the middle. He picked out apples one at a time, turning each over, which drove her crazy. She texted him a photo of two brands of yogurt with a question mark. He wrote back *whichever*, which was not helpful, so she bought both.

They found each other by the bread. The cart had accumulated things not on the envelope: a bag of pretzels, a jar of olives, a bunch of tulips that had been marked down to four dollars because the edges were going brown.

"They'll open," Priya said.

"They always do," David said, and put them in.

Checkout took eleven minutes. The kid bagging put the eggs under a bag of onions and David quietly moved them.

At home they carried everything in in two trips, and Priya started putting things away while David went back out for the recycling bins. The driveway was hot. He rolled them up, hosed off the lid of the green one where something had leaked, and stood for a second in the shade of the maple, not thinking about anything.

Inside, Priya was cutting the tulip stems at an angle under running water.

"There's a splinter in the deck stairs," he said. "Third one."

"Add it to the list," she said, and he did, on the back of the envelope, under *cilantro*.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company. Priya read it aloud in the car while he drove.

"Milk, eggs, that bread you like, laundry detergent — did we really run out of detergent?"

"You did three loads on Wednesday."

"You wore three shirts on Wednesday."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because the kitchen faucet had developed a drip that neither of them could ignore anymore. Marcus wandered the plumbing aisle with the old washer in a sandwich bag, comparing it against the pegboard display, while Priya looked at succulents by the register and decided against buying one, then decided for one, then put it back.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always are. Priya pushed the cart. Marcus went ahead for produce and came back with a cantaloupe he insisted was ripe, thumping it near her ear as evidence. She was unconvinced but let it go into the cart. In the cereal aisle they had a small disagreement about whether they still needed the store-brand granola, since the last box had gone stale in the back of the pantry. Priya won by pointing out that Marcus had been the one to buy it.

At checkout, the card reader asked twice for a PIN Marcus couldn't remember, and Priya reached over and typed it without looking up from her phone.

Home again, they carried the bags in three trips. Priya put things away — she had opinions about which shelf things belonged on — while Marcus knelt under the sink with a wrench and the new washer, the water shut off, a towel spread across the cabinet floor.

"Try it," he said eventually.

She turned the handle. The water ran clean and stopped clean when she shut it. He got up off the floor slowly, rubbing his knee, and she handed him the cantaloupe to cut.


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of weather that made staying in bed feel like a moral victory. Dana got up anyway at seven-thirty, because the dog needed walking and because if she didn't start the laundry before nine, the whole day would slip away.

By the time she came back with Rufus, Marcus was awake, standing barefoot in the kitchen scrolling through his phone while the coffee maker gurgled.

"We're out of trash bags," he said. "And I used the last of the dish soap last night."

"Add it to the list." Dana unclipped the leash. "I already put down eggs, bread, coffee, and that yogurt you like."

They left at ten. Marcus drove; Dana navigated the list on her phone, which was really just a running note titled *STORE* that neither of them ever deleted. First stop was the hardware store for furnace filters and a replacement bulb for the bathroom vanity, where Marcus spent four minutes comparing wattages and Dana wandered to look at paint chips she had no plans to buy.

The grocery store was crowded. They split up in the produce section—Dana for apples and spinach, Marcus for bananas and whatever tomatoes looked least sad—and reconvened near the deli counter. He'd added a bag of tortilla chips to the cart.

"Those weren't on the list."

"They're aspirational."

She let it go. In the cereal aisle they debated whether they still had rice at home, decided they probably did, then bought rice anyway because neither of them was certain. At checkout, the total was forty dollars more than Dana expected, which was true every week.

They unloaded the car in a light drizzle, hauling bags in two trips. Marcus put things away wrong—cheese on the top shelf, again—and Dana rearranged half of it after he left the room. Then she started the second load of laundry.


The list was in Priya's handwriting, but Daniel had added three items in the car: coffee filters, batteries, and, inexplicably, "the good mustard."

"There's no such thing as the good mustard," Priya said, steering into the Kroger lot. "There's mustard."

"You'll know it when you see it."

They split up at the entrance, the way they always did. Priya took produce and dairy; Daniel took the aisles and the deli counter. It saved maybe seven minutes and gave them something to do besides walk slowly behind an old man reading nutrition labels. Priya squeezed avocados and put back two that felt like tennis balls. She texted Daniel: *do we need eggs* and got back *yes 18* and then, forty seconds later, *actually 12, we throw them out*.

They found each other near the frozen foods. Daniel had the good mustard. It was a squeeze bottle of Dijon, three dollars, entirely ordinary, and Priya said nothing about it because it was Saturday and she had already won the argument about the second bag of chips.

Checkout took eleven minutes behind a woman doing coupons. In the car, the AC took a while to get cold, and Daniel drummed on the wheel while Priya scrolled through the photos she'd taken of the hall closet, trying to remember what size furnace filter they needed.

At home they carried everything in two trips, which was one trip too many, and Priya put things away while Daniel broke down the boxes for recycling and hauled the bin to the curb, a day early, because he always did that and always forgot he had.

Afterward, he changed the furnace filter—wrong size, it turned out, so it went back in the car for Monday—and Priya started a load of towels. Then they sat on the back steps with iced tea, not talking much, listening to somebody two houses down running a leaf blower in July.


The list was Marcus's idea. He wrote it on the back of an envelope while the coffee brewed, and Diane amended it from the doorway, still in her robe.

"We need dish soap," she said. "And the good kind, not whatever was on sale."

"The good kind was on sale last time."

"That was a fluke."

They left at ten. The Honda's check-engine light had been on for three weeks, a small orange accusation neither of them mentioned. Marcus drove. Diane held the envelope and read the list aloud in the parking lot as if it might have changed on the way over.

Inside, they split up. This was efficient in theory. In practice, Marcus stood in the cereal aisle for four minutes trying to remember whether Diane had said *no* to the granola with the almonds or the one with the pumpkin seeds, then bought neither. He found her in produce, holding two bunches of bananas.

"These are too green," she said. "These are too far gone."

"Get both. The green ones will be ready when the others aren't."

She looked at him with something like grudging respect and put both in the cart.

At checkout, the woman ahead of them had a coupon issue. Diane read the tabloid headlines. Marcus reorganized the cart so the eggs weren't under the canned tomatoes, which Diane noticed and did not comment on, which was its own kind of comment.

At home they carried in the bags, four trips between them. Diane put things away wrong — the peanut butter with the cereal, again — and Marcus let it go. He took out the recycling. She started a load of towels.

At two o'clock they sat at the kitchen table eating sandwiches, the afternoon still ahead of them, the check-engine light still on, the towels turning over and over in the dark.


The list was Deb's handwriting, but James had added three items in the margin: coffee filters, batteries, salsa. He put it in his back pocket and they took his car because hers was low on gas and neither of them wanted to deal with that yet.

At the hardware store, Deb held up two furnace filters. "Sixteen by twenty-five, right?"

"I think it's twenty by twenty-five."

"You said sixteen last time and we had to come back."

"Then get both," James said, and she rolled her eyes and put one back, because he was probably right and she just didn't want to say so. They also bought a package of felt pads for the dining chairs, which had been scratching the floor for two years.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was at eleven on a Saturday, carts nosing past each other in the produce section. Deb picked through the bananas for a bunch that wasn't already spotted. James went for the deli counter and came back with turkey and a container of potato salad she hadn't asked for.

"We have potato salad," she said.

"We had potato salad. I ate it Thursday."

They split up in the middle of the store, the way they'd learned to do — he took the canned aisles and the cereal, she took dairy and the cleaning supplies. They found each other again near the frozen food, and Deb put a bag of shrimp in the cart without explaining, and James didn't ask.

At home they carried the bags in through the garage in two trips. James put things away wrong, the way he always did, and Deb rearranged half of it after he went out to mow. She could hear the mower start, stall, and start again. She stood at the sink with a glass of water and watched him through the window for a minute before she went to find the vacuum.


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like a lemon, and Dana pulled it down while Marcus was still finishing his coffee.

"You want to hit the hardware store first or the grocery store?" she asked.

"Hardware," he said. "That way if they don't have the right washer I can look it up on my phone in the parking lot and figure out where else to go."

The bathroom faucet had been dripping for eleven days. Marcus had counted, mostly to annoy himself.

At the hardware store, an employee in a red vest walked him down aisle six and handed him a small plastic bag of assorted rubber washers for two dollars and forty cents. Dana wandered off and came back holding a packet of felt pads for the bottoms of the dining chairs.

"The scraping," she said.

"I know."

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always are. Dana took the cart and Marcus took the list, and they moved through produce arguing mildly about whether they needed two bunches of bananas or one. Marcus said one, because last time half of them went brown on the counter. Dana said two, because she'd started taking one to work.

They compromised badly and got three, which neither of them noticed until they were unloading the car.

In the cereal aisle Dana held up a box.

"This is the one you like?"

"That's the one I liked in 2019."

"So no."

"So yes, but I'm being difficult."

She put it in the cart.

At the register the total came to a hundred and forty-one dollars, which felt high, and they said so to each other, and then agreed it was probably the meat.

At home Marcus fixed the faucet in under ten minutes. Dana put the groceries away and listened to the sudden, specific silence of a bathroom that wasn't dripping.


The list was Priya's, but Daniel held it, because he was the one who kept losing track of the cart.

They started at the hardware store, where they needed a replacement filter for the furnace and a set of picture hooks. Priya stood in aisle seven comparing two brands while Daniel wandered off to look at extension cords they didn't need. When she found him, he was holding a small level.

"We have a level."

"We have a level somewhere," he said, and put it back.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts nosing past each other near the produce. Priya took the left side of the store, Daniel the right, a system they'd worked out years ago. She got the vegetables, the yogurt, the bread from the bakery counter where the woman always gave her a heel of sourdough for free. He got the coffee, the cereal, the chicken thighs on sale, and stood too long in front of the crackers because she'd only written "crackers."

They met in the middle by the eggs.

"Which ones?" he asked, phone out, ready to text a photo.

"Any. The cheap ones."

At checkout, the total was higher than either of them expected, which it always was. Daniel paid. Priya bagged, arranging things so the bread stayed on top.

In the parking lot, the wind had picked up. She held the cart while he loaded the trunk, and then he returned the cart to the corral because he was particular about that.

Back home, they put things away without talking much—she did the fridge, he did the pantry, and then he went down to the basement with the furnace filter while she started a load of towels.

Around two, he came up and said, "It was the wrong size."

Priya laughed. "Of course it was."

They got in the car again.


The list was in Marcus's handwriting, which meant it was mostly illegible, but Dana had learned to interpret it over eleven years. "Chkn thghs" she could manage. "Th thing for the sink" she could not.

"The strainer," Marcus said from the driver's seat. "The little basket part. It cracked."

"You could have written 'strainer.'"

"I was in a hurry."

The morning had already produced a trip to the hardware store, where Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle holding the broken piece up to eight nearly identical replacements while Dana wandered off to look at paint chips she had no intention of buying. She came back with a color called Wheat Field and said, "For the hallway. Someday." He said someday, and they left with a strainer and a package of furnace filters they'd been meaning to get since November.

At the grocery store Dana pushed the cart because Marcus steered it into things. He read the list aloud, item by item, out of order, doubling back for the yogurt he'd forgotten. In the produce section they had a brief disagreement about whether the good tomatoes were worth the extra dollar sixty. Dana put them in the cart. Marcus took them out. Dana put them back and said, "You'll eat them."

"I'll eat the cheap ones too."

"You'll complain about the cheap ones."

He conceded. In the cereal aisle he added a box of the sugary kind he liked, holding it up defensively before she could say anything, and she just laughed at him.

The checkout line was slow. A woman ahead of them was arguing about a coupon. Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and in the parking lot the cart wobbled and one bag tipped, sending three oranges rolling under a parked minivan. Marcus went down on his knees on the asphalt to get them, and Dana held the cart still and told him he had a hole in his jeans.


The list was Marcus's idea. Denise had wanted to just wing it, the way they usually did, but they'd come home last Saturday with three jars of pickles and no coffee, so she let him write it out on the back of an envelope while she found her keys.

The bank first, because Denise had a check from her mother that had been sitting in her purse since March. Marcus waited in the car with the windows down, listening to a caller on the radio argue about the Braves' bullpen. When she came back she was shaking her head.

"Twenty minutes. There was one teller."

"You could've used the app."

"Mama writes on the memo line. It's the whole point of the check."

At the grocery store they split up, which they'd learned was faster, though it meant texting each other pictures of yogurt. Marcus took produce and the meat counter; Denise took the middle aisles and dairy. He was standing over the tomatoes when his phone buzzed with a photo of two boxes of rice.

*The one we always get*, he wrote back.

*They're both the one we always get.*

*The blue one.*

They found each other again in the cereal aisle, cart to cart, and Denise put back the cookies he'd added without saying anything about it, and he let her. At checkout the woman ahead of them had a coupon that wouldn't scan and Marcus felt Denise's hand settle on his forearm, which meant *don't sigh out loud.*

Afterward they stopped at the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of picture hooks Denise had been asking about for two months. In the parking lot Marcus loaded the trunk while she checked the receipt.

"They charged us twice for the filter."

"You want to go back in?"

She looked at the store, then at the sky, which was getting white and heavy.

"Monday," she said. "Let's beat the rain."


The list was Dana's, written in the same cramped shorthand she'd used since college: "eggs, tp, that bread." Marcus had learned to translate. That bread meant the seeded rye from the bakery counter, not the sandwich loaf, and if they were out he was supposed to text her a photo of the alternatives before committing.

They left the house at nine-thirty, later than planned, because Dana had gotten pulled into a phone call with her sister about their mother's knee surgery. Marcus waited in the driveway with the car running, then turned it off, then read the news on his phone until she came out apologizing.

The first stop was the hardware store for furnace filters. Marcus wandered off toward the paint chips while Dana compared MERV ratings, and when she found him he was holding two nearly identical swatches of gray.

"For what?" she said.

"The hallway. Eventually."

"Put them back. We're not doing the hallway this year."

He put them back, but he kept one, folded into his wallet, which she pretended not to see.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts wedged in the produce aisle while people deliberated over avocados. Dana took the left side of the store and Marcus took the right, a system they'd worked out years ago and had never once discussed out loud. She got the yogurt and the coffee. He got the chicken thighs and stood for a full minute in front of the bread, then texted her a picture of an unfamiliar sourdough. She wrote back: *fine.*

At the register, Dana remembered the batteries and Marcus went back for them, jogging a little.

In the parking lot, loading the trunk, she said, "We should get lunch out."

"We have all this food."

"I know," she said, and he closed the trunk, and they got lunch out.


The Saturday Errands

The list was in Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items to the bottom in his blocky capitals: BATTERIES, DOG FOOD, THAT BREAD YOU LIKE.

"That bread I like," Dana said in the car, holding up the paper. "Which one?"

"The seeded one."

"There are four seeded ones."

"The one in the brown bag."

She let it go. They had been married eleven years; she would know it when she saw it, and if she didn't, he'd wander off to the bakery aisle and find it himself while she stood at the deli counter waiting for a number to be called.

The hardware store came first. Marcus needed a replacement flapper for the upstairs toilet, which had been running intermittently since Tuesday, keeping Dana awake. He held two packages up under the fluorescent lights and squinted at them, then bought both, on the theory that returning one was easier than a second trip.

At the grocery store, they split the list without discussing it, the way they always did. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. She found him twelve minutes later comparing the unit prices on paper towels, frowning.

"The bigger pack is cheaper per sheet," he said.

"It won't fit under the sink."

He put it back.

At the checkout, the bagger was a teenager who put the eggs on the bottom, and Dana rearranged them without saying anything, feeling old for caring. Marcus paid. Outside, the parking lot was hot and the cart wheel stuck going over the crosswalk.

At home, they carried everything in over two trips. Dana put the groceries away while Marcus went upstairs with the flapper, and for a while the house was quiet except for the refrigerator door and, eventually, the sound of the tank filling and then, mercifully, stopping.


Marcus found the grocery list on the refrigerator, half-hidden behind a magnet shaped like a lobster they'd bought in Maine three summers ago.

"You wrote 'stuff for the thing,'" he said, holding it up.

Priya looked over from the sink, where she was rinsing out travel mugs. "The party at Dana's. Chips, that spinach dip mix, a bottle of wine."

"You could have written that."

"I wrote it at eleven at night."

They took her car because his needed an oil change, which was the second errand of the day. At the Kroger on Sheridan, Marcus pushed the cart and Priya walked ahead, moving with the certainty of someone who had mapped the store in her head. He kept stopping. There was a display of stone fruit near the entrance and he pressed his thumb against a peach.

"They're not ripe," she said without turning around.

"They might be."

"It's April."

He put the peach back. In the cereal aisle they disagreed briefly about whether they still had oatmeal at home. Priya was almost sure they did. Marcus put a canister in the cart anyway, and she let it go, because last time she'd been wrong about the rice and he'd been gracious about it.

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was paying partly in cash and partly with a card, counting quarters. Priya scrolled her phone. Marcus read the covers of the magazines and reported that a celebrity he'd never heard of was expecting twins.

Back home, they carried the bags in together, two trips each. Priya started putting things away and found the oatmeal—an unopened canister, already there, at the back of the cabinet.

She held it up without comment.

"Okay," Marcus said. "Now we have a lot of oatmeal."

He took the trash out. She started a load of towels. It was not yet noon.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who carried it, folded into the pocket of his flannel shirt. They'd left the apartment at nine-thirty, later than they'd meant to, because Dana had gotten distracted stripping the bed and then decided the sheets should go in before they left so the machine would be done when they got back.

The hardware store came first. They needed a new washer for the kitchen faucet, which had been dripping for three weeks in a way that Marcus claimed he couldn't hear and Dana claimed was slowly driving her insane. He held up two small packages in the plumbing aisle and Dana squinted at them, and neither of them was certain, so they bought both.

At the grocery store Dana pushed the cart and Marcus walked ahead, disappearing down aisles and returning with things. Some of them were on the list. Some were not: a bag of the chili-lime peanuts he liked, a jar of pickled onions.

"Where are we putting those," Dana said.

"In my mouth."

She let it go. In produce she stood over the tomatoes a long time, pressing them lightly with her thumb, rejecting four before she found two she was willing to accept. Marcus waited with the cart, reading the ingredients on a box of crackers he had no intention of buying.

The line was long. A woman ahead of them had a coupon that wouldn't scan, and the cashier called for someone, and nobody came for a while. Dana rested her forearms on the cart handle. Marcus put his hand flat on her back, between her shoulder blades, and left it there, and they didn't say anything, and then the line moved.

In the parking lot he loaded the trunk while she checked the receipt. They'd forgotten the coffee filters.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things at the bottom: batteries, the good coffee, dish soap (not the lemon one).

They left the house at nine-thirty, later than planned, because Dana couldn't find her keys and then found them in the pocket of yesterday's jeans. Marcus drove. The hardware store first, where they stood in the plumbing aisle for eleven minutes comparing two washers that looked identical, until an employee named Gus told them either would work and they should just buy both for eighty cents.

"That's the most useful thing anyone's said to me all week," Dana said in the parking lot.

At the grocery store Marcus took the cart and Dana took the list, which was how they always did it. She read items out; he retrieved them. In the produce section she pressed her thumb against three avocados and rejected all three.

"They're for Wednesday," Marcus said.

"They're for never, at this rate."

He found one in the back of the pile that satisfied her. In the cereal aisle they had a small disagreement about whether they already had oatmeal at home. Dana was certain they did. Marcus was certain they'd finished it in September. They bought oatmeal. Later, unpacking, Dana would find a half-full canister behind the flour and say nothing about it.

The checkout line was long because two registers were closed. Marcus read the tabloid headlines out loud in a newscaster voice until Dana told him to stop, laughing, and he stopped.

They loaded the trunk together. It was cold enough that their breath showed. On the drive home Dana held the coffee bag in her lap and opened it and smelled it, and then held it over so Marcus could smell it too, and he took one hand off the wheel to steady her wrist.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope in his cramped handwriting. Dana pointed out, as she always did, that they had an app for this. He said the app made him forget things.

They left the apartment at nine-thirty, later than planned, because the dishwasher had finished mid-cycle with a puddle underneath it. Marcus knelt with a dish towel while Dana ran her hand along the door seal, looking for the crack. They didn't find one. She wrote *call landlord* on the envelope.

At the hardware store, Dana held two furnace filters up like playing cards and asked which size. Marcus took a photo of the old one's dimensions on his phone before they left, which turned out to be the reason they got the right one. He didn't say anything about it. She said, "Fine, you were right about the photo," and he said, "I didn't say anything," and she said, "You were thinking loudly."

The grocery store on Saturday was a specific kind of hell. Marcus took the cart and the left side of the store; Dana took the produce and the deli counter. They met at the endcap of aisle seven, where he had already put back the cereal she'd texted about because it was six dollars a box now. She found the store brand instead. They argued mildly about whether they needed more olive oil, and he lost, and she put the olive oil in the cart.

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt. Neither of them discussed the division; it had settled itself years ago, the way water finds a path.

In the parking lot he pushed the cart back to the corral while she started the car and turned the air on. On the drive home they talked about whether to grill, and decided against it.


The list was Maureen's, but Danny drove.

"You forgot buttermilk," he said at the second stoplight.

"It's on there. Under eggs."

He squinted at the paper she'd propped on the dashboard, then gave up and turned into the Kroger lot. Saturday morning meant the good spots were gone. He parked near the cart return, which Maureen said was the only sensible thing he did in parking lots.

Inside, they split up the way they always did. She took produce and dairy; he took the aisles, because he liked reading labels and she didn't have the patience. She found him eight minutes later in front of the pasta sauces, holding two jars.

"This one's a dollar more."

"Get the cheap one."

"The cheap one has corn syrup."

"Danny. It's spaghetti."

He put the cheap one in the cart, but slowly, so she'd know it was a concession. At the deli counter she ordered a half pound of turkey and he wandered off toward the bakery and came back with a box of doughnuts he set in the cart without comment. She didn't say anything either, which was its own kind of agreement.

The self-checkout ate two of her coupons. Danny waved down the attendant, a teenager named Brie, who fixed it in about nine seconds and looked bored doing it.

They loaded the trunk in the parking lot heat. Then the hardware store, where Danny needed a furnace filter and got talked into a two-pack, and the dry cleaner's, where Maureen picked up his gray suit and her blue dress and discovered they'd broken a button.

"They'll fix it," Danny said.

"I'll fix it. It's faster."

At home they put everything away, and she made sandwiches from the turkey, and they ate them standing at the counter because sitting down felt like it would end the day too early.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who insisted on the cart with the wobbly wheel, because he claimed he could fix anything with enough downward pressure.

They'd gotten a late start. Saturday mornings had a way of dissolving—coffee, then the dishwasher that needed emptying, then Dana discovering the hall light had burned out, which meant a detour to the hardware store first. Marcus stood in the bulb aisle for four full minutes trying to remember whether the fixture took a candelabra base.

"Just buy both," Dana said.

"That's how we ended up with three boxes of furnace filters."

"Those we needed."

"We needed one."

At the grocery store, they split up the way they always did, which was to say inefficiently. Marcus went for produce and came back with a pineapple nobody had requested. Dana pointed at it.

"It was on sale."

"You don't cut pineapple. I cut pineapple."

"And you're very good at it."

She let it stay in the cart. In the cereal aisle they ran into Priya from two houses down, and spent ten minutes hearing about her son's travel soccer schedule while the ice cream sweated in the bottom of the basket. Dana kept nodding. Marcus kept glancing at the frozen section like it might come to him.

Checkout was slow. The self-scanner rejected Dana's coupon twice and then a teenager in a red polo fixed it in three seconds without explaining how.

In the parking lot, loading bags into the trunk, Marcus said, "We forgot bread."

Dana looked at him for a moment. Then she pulled her keys out.

"I'll go. You put the milk on your side so it doesn't roll."

He watched her walk back toward the automatic doors, and thought, not for the first time, that he'd married a person who finished things. He rearranged the bags. He got the milk exactly right.


Saturday morning came in gray and cool, the kind of October light that makes a kitchen look older than it is. Marisol was already up, drinking coffee at the counter and writing a list on the back of a utility envelope. Dev came out in a sweatshirt, hair flattened on one side, and read over her shoulder.

"Eggs," he said. "We have eggs."

"Four. That's not eggs, that's a suggestion."

They loaded the car with the returnable bottles first, three bags rattling in the trunk, and stopped at the recycling center where a man in a reflective vest waved them toward the far bay. Dev fed cans into the machine while Marisol called her sister and stood by the fence, laughing at something Dev couldn't hear. When she came back she had a receipt for four dollars and eighty cents and looked pleased with herself, like she'd won it at cards.

The grocery store was already crowded. Marisol took the cart because Dev steered it like a shopping cart was a thing that had wronged him. They split the list: he went for produce and coffee, she took the middle aisles. He came back with two bunches of cilantro and no coffee, having forgotten, and she sent him back while she stood in line at the deli counter holding number 47.

At checkout they discovered the chicken thighs he'd grabbed were nearly at their sell-by date. Marisol shrugged. "We'll cook them tonight."

"With what?"

"The cilantro. Both bunches."

They put the bags in the back seat because the trunk still smelled like beer bottles. On the way home they stopped for gas and Dev ran the squeegee over the windshield, badly, leaving streaks. Marisol didn't say anything about it. She was thinking about the pantry shelf that needed fixing, and whether they had the right screws, and whether that was a today problem or a next-weekend problem.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana had a habit of losing paper in her coat pockets.

They started at the hardware store on Vine, where the furnace filter aisle smelled like cardboard and dust. Marcus held up two sizes, squinting at the numbers.

"Sixteen by twenty-five," Dana said. "I measured it Thursday."

"You measured it, or you looked at the old one?"

"I looked at the old one, which is the same thing but faster."

He put the filter in the cart. They also got a package of furnace tape, because he insisted the last one had gone missing, and a bag of birdseed that Dana grabbed on the way to the register without saying anything about it.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts pausing sideways in the produce section while people examined avocados. Dana took the left half of the list and Marcus took the right. They separated at the bakery and met again near the yogurt, comparing hauls like it was a competition.

"They were out of the whole bean," he said.

"Get the other kind, then. The dark roast."

"You'll complain."

"I'll complain quietly."

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt, an arrangement they'd fallen into years ago without ever discussing it. The total was more than either of them expected, which was also usual.

In the parking lot the wind had picked up. Marcus wrestled the cart back to the corral while Dana rearranged the trunk so the eggs wouldn't slide.

"Dry cleaning," he said, getting in.

"Monday. They close at two on Saturdays now."

He backed out slowly. Somebody's dropped receipt skittered across the asphalt. At home there would be the filter to change, the groceries to put away, and after that, if the afternoon held, nothing at all.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Russell had added three items at the bottom in his cramped print: batteries, paper towels, the good coffee. They took his car because hers still had a bag of donation clothes in the trunk they'd been meaning to drop off for two weeks.

First stop was the hardware store on Delaware Avenue, where Russell needed a new washer for the kitchen faucet that had been dripping since Tuesday. Dana wandered into the garden section while he waited at the counter and came back holding a small pot of basil.

"We killed the last one," he said.

"That was rosemary. Rosemary is impossible."

He didn't argue. The basil went in the cart.

The grocery store was crowded the way it always was on Saturday mornings, everyone with the same idea. Dana took the left side of the aisles and Russell took the right, which was a system they'd developed years ago without ever discussing it. She got the produce, weighing tomatoes in her palm; he stood a long time in front of the yogurt trying to remember which one she'd said she liked, then texted her, and she wrote back *plain, the big tub.*

They met again in the cereal aisle. He had the coffee, the good kind, and also a bag of pretzels he set in the cart with a slightly guilty look.

"Fine," she said.

At the checkout, the cashier was a teenager who kept apologizing for being slow. Dana told her not to worry about it. Russell bagged, badly, the way he always did, eggs on the bottom.

Back home they unloaded in two trips. Dana put the groceries away while Russell got under the sink with a wrench, and by one o'clock the faucet had stopped dripping and the basil was on the windowsill over the sink, where it would probably last a month.


The list was Dana's, written in pencil on the back of an envelope, but Marcus was the one who carried it into the store, folding and unfolding it as they moved through the produce section.

"We don't need two bunches of bananas," Dana said.

"You eat them fast."

"I eat one a day. Two bunches is eleven bananas."

He put one back. They'd already been to the hardware store, where Marcus spent nine minutes comparing furnace filters and Dana sat on a display riding mower until an employee gave her a look. The car smelled faintly like the sawdust aisle now.

In the cereal section they split up. Dana went for coffee and paper towels; Marcus took the rest of the list, which was mostly things for the chili he'd promised to make. He got distracted by a display of hot sauces and bought one with a cartoon devil on the label. When they reconvened at the deli counter, Dana looked at it and said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.

The checkout line was slow. A woman ahead of them was paying with a stack of coupons, and Marcus started narrating under his breath — "she's got one more, I can feel it" — until Dana elbowed him. Total came to eighty-seven dollars and change, more than they'd expected, which was true most weeks.

In the parking lot Dana loaded bags into the trunk while Marcus returned the cart, jogging the last few feet the way he always did, like it was a race against no one. On the drive home she read him a text from his sister about Thanksgiving, and he made a noise that meant he'd think about it later.

There were still two loads of laundry waiting, and the filter to install. But first Marcus put the groceries away wrong, and Dana rearranged half of them, and neither of them mentioned it.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who insisted they leave before ten. "Saturday afternoon at Kroger is a bloodbath," he said, jingling the keys.

They stopped first at the hardware store for a furnace filter, because the old one had turned the color of a paper bag. Dana held it up to the fluorescent light in aisle six while Marcus compared MERV ratings on his phone, and they settled on the middle option, the way they usually did.

At the grocery store, they split up. Marcus took the perimeter—chicken thighs on sale, a carton of eggs he opened and inspected, two pounds of Honeycrisps. Dana handled the interior aisles and texted him a photo of two brands of black beans with the message *which one do you actually like*. He wrote back *the one with the yellow label*, which was not helpful, since both had yellow labels, so she bought the cheaper one.

They found each other again near the deli. Dana had picked up a rotisserie chicken they hadn't planned on, and Marcus didn't say anything about it, which she noticed and appreciated. In line, they debated whether they needed more paper towels. They did not. They bought them anyway.

The car was warm. Marcus drove; Dana ate a handful of the almonds she'd bought and put the receipt in the glove compartment with all the others.

At home they carried everything in two trips, and Dana started the laundry while Marcus swapped the furnace filter, kneeling in the hallway with his shoulders wedged into the closet. When he came out there was dust on his forearm.

"Lunch," he said.

"There's a whole chicken."

"There is," he agreed, sounding pleased with himself, and washed his hands at the kitchen sink.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who carried it into the store, folded twice and tucked in his shirt pocket like a ticket he might need to produce.

"Cart or basket?" he asked.

"Cart. We need the litter."

Saturday morning at the Hy-Vee on Ashland meant the aisles were half-blocked by people considering yogurt. Dana went ahead to produce and started pressing avocados with her thumb, setting aside the ones that gave too easily. Marcus watched her do this for a while, then wandered to the bulk bins and came back with a bag of pistachios he hadn't been asked to get.

"We have pistachios."

"We had pistachios."

She let it go. They worked through the list in the order the store imposed rather than the order she'd written it, which annoyed her slightly every single week and which she had stopped mentioning around year three. Marcus reached the high shelf for the good olive oil. Dana vetoed the good olive oil in favor of the one on sale, and Marcus put it back without comment because it was, in fact, seven dollars more.

At the deli counter they waited behind a man ordering a quarter pound each of four different things. Marcus checked his phone. Dana looked at the rotisserie chickens and decided against one.

"Did we get bread?"

"You have it. Under the paper towels."

Checkout took eleven minutes. In the parking lot the wind had picked up, and Dana held the cart while Marcus loaded the trunk, arranging bags so the eggs sat upright in the corner. On the way home they stopped at the hardware store for furnace filters and a package of picture hangers, and Marcus said they should really get the gutters done before it snowed. Dana said she'd been saying that since August.


The list was Diane's, but Marcus held it, because Diane always lost track of paper the moment she got a cart in her hands.

"Bananas," he read.

"I saw them." She was already three steps ahead, turning a bunch over, checking the undersides for those brown flecks that meant they'd be mush by Wednesday. "These are too green."

"You said green was better. Last time."

"Last time we were going out of town." She put them in anyway, then added a second bunch. "Your mother eats a banana every morning."

"She's not coming until the eighth."

"She'll be here Thursday. She moved it."

Marcus looked up from the list. "When did that happen?"

"Tuesday. I told you in the car."

He didn't remember, but he'd learned that arguing about what he'd been told in the car was a losing proposition. He crossed off *bananas* and moved down. Coffee, paper towels, the chicken thighs that were on sale if you bought two packages.

They split up in the middle aisles, the way they always did, and found each other again near the dairy case. Diane had a container of the yogurt Marcus liked and a bag of shredded cheese she hadn't asked about. Marcus had olives, which weren't on the list.

"Really?"

"They're for me. I'm allowed one unauthorized item."

"That's not a rule."

"It's my rule."

At the register the total came out higher than either of them expected, and Diane made the small noise she made about prices now, a sound like air let out of a tire. Marcus loaded the bags into the trunk over the case of seltzer they'd bought two weeks ago and never brought inside.

On the way home they stopped for gas and dropped off the dry cleaning, and Marcus said they should look at the gutters this afternoon, and Diane said they should, in the tone that meant neither of them would.


The alarm didn't go off, because it was Saturday, and so Dana and Miguel slept until nearly nine. She got up first and started the coffee. He came down twenty minutes later in the gray sweatpants with the bleach stain, holding the list they'd started on the fridge whiteboard Thursday night.

"We need dish soap," he said. "And I used the last of the trash bags."

"Write it down or we'll forget again."

They did the laundry first because the machine took an hour and forty minutes and they'd learned to start it before leaving. Miguel sorted; Dana pretreated the collar of his good work shirt with the stick that never quite worked. Then he swept the kitchen while she wiped down the counters and cleared the mail pile, which had gotten out of hand — two credit card offers, a wedding invitation from her cousin, a coupon booklet neither of them would open.

The grocery store at eleven was crowded. Dana pushed the cart; Miguel walked ahead, checking his phone against the shelf tags.

"Are we getting the good yogurt or the cheap yogurt?"

"Cheap. The good one goes bad before we eat it."

They disagreed briefly about tomatoes — she wanted the vine ones, he thought they were overpriced — and settled on a compromise nobody was thrilled with. In the cereal aisle he put a box of Frosted Flakes in the cart, and she looked at him, and he left it there.

The line was long. They talked about whether to drive to his mother's next weekend or the weekend after.

At home they carried in four bags each, one trip. Miguel started putting things away in the wrong places and Dana redirected him without much comment. The dryer buzzed. It was one-fifteen, and there was still the afternoon.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Michael had added three items in the margin: batteries, dish soap, something for Sunday. She held it up in the car and asked what "something for Sunday" meant.

"Dessert," he said. "Your mom's coming."

"Right." She folded the list into quarters and put it in her jacket pocket, the way she always did, the way that meant she'd have to unfold it eight times in the store.

They stopped at the hardware store first because it opened earlier and because the porch light had been out for two weeks. Michael stood in the lighting aisle comparing wattages while Dana wandered off and came back with a packet of tomato seeds she had no plan for.

"It's October," he said.

"For spring."

"We'll lose them."

"We might not." She put them in the cart anyway.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays are, carts nosing past each other at the ends of aisles. Dana took the left side, Michael the right, meeting in the middle with cans and cereal. He picked out apples one at a time, turning each over, and she told him he was being ridiculous, and he kept doing it. At the deli counter she took a number and they waited, not talking much, reading the specials board. Someone's kid was crying two aisles over.

Michael put a pie in the cart. Dana took it out and put in a different pie, key lime, because her mother didn't like apple. He didn't argue.

In the parking lot the wind had come up and the cart wanted to roll. He held it while she loaded bags into the trunk, and then they drove home with the radio on low, the seeds rattling loose somewhere under the seat, both of them thinking, separately, about lunch.


The list was Marcus's idea, but Dana was the one who kept adding to it, scrawling "sponges" and "coffee filters" in the margin while he backed the car out of the driveway.

The hardware store came first. Marcus needed a new washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since Tuesday in a rhythm Dana swore she could hear from the bedroom. She wandered the aisles while he asked a clerk about O-ring sizes, and came back with a packet of tulip bulbs.

"It's October," Marcus said.

"That's when you plant them."

He didn't argue. He'd learned that arguing about bulbs was a losing proposition.

At the grocery store, they split up. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. This was efficient in theory and rarely in practice, because Marcus always texted her a photo of two nearly identical jars of pasta sauce and waited for a verdict. She wrote back *the one on the left* without really looking, and he bought the one on the right anyway, because it was cheaper.

They met near the frozen foods. Dana had found the good bread, the seeded kind that sold out by noon, and she held it up like a trophy. Marcus put it in the cart under the paper towels so it wouldn't get crushed.

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was disputing a coupon. Dana leaned against the cart handle, reading the tabloid headlines aloud in a flat voice until Marcus laughed and told her to stop.

At home, they unloaded together. Dana handed things up from the bags; Marcus put them away, mostly in the right places. Then he went to the bathroom with his little paper packet of washers, and she went out back with the tulip bulbs and a trowel, and the afternoon went on like that.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who insisted on the hardware store first, because the kitchen faucet had been dripping for eleven days and he'd finally admitted he needed a new cartridge, not just tighter fittings.

"You said last weekend it was the washer," Dana said in the truck.

"It was the washer. It was also the cartridge."

At the hardware store he stood in aisle six holding two small boxes, comparing part numbers against a photo on his phone while Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of birdseed and a paint sample card she'd carried around for twenty minutes before putting back.

Groceries came after. Dana pushed the cart because Marcus drifted; he'd stop dead in front of the cereal and read the side of a box like it was a legal document. They split the list at the produce section — she took vegetables and dairy, he took the middle aisles and the deli counter, where he waited eight minutes for a half pound of turkey and texted her a photo of a sale on ground coffee.

*Get two,* she wrote back.

They reconvened by the frozen foods. He'd gotten the wrong tortillas, the flour ones, and she looked at them and then at him and decided it wasn't worth walking back. The self-checkout scanner refused to read the barcode on the birdseed three times before an employee came over and typed the number in.

At home they carried the bags in through the garage in two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus knelt under the sink with a wrench and a towel, swearing quietly at a nut that wouldn't turn. It took him forty minutes. When he finally stood up and ran the tap, the dripping had stopped.

"Listen," he said.

Dana came over, wiped her hands on her jeans, and listened to nothing at all.

"Huh," she said. "Look at that."


The list was on the refrigerator, held there by a magnet shaped like a lobster from a trip to Maine they'd taken four years ago. Dana pulled it down, glanced at Marcus's handwriting crowding the bottom half, and frowned.

"Since when do you need protein powder?"

"Since I started going to the gym at lunch." He was pulling on his shoes by the door, the ones with the broken lace he kept meaning to replace. "Two weeks now."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I told you Tuesday. You were watching that show about the bakery."

That was probably true. She folded the list into her back pocket and grabbed her keys.

They stopped at the hardware store first, for furnace filters and a can of touch-up paint for the spot on the hallway wall where the doorknob had punched through. Marcus wanted to look at grills. Dana let him look for eleven minutes, then said his name once, and he followed her out.

The grocery store on Saturday morning was a slow-moving disaster. Dana took the left side of the aisle, Marcus the right. They'd done this so many times it required no discussion — she got produce and dairy, he got the cereal and the things in cans. They met at the meat counter.

"They're out of the chicken thighs you like," he said.

"The bone-in?"

"All of it. There's a sale on pork."

She considered this longer than the situation warranted, then said fine, pork, and put two packages in the cart.

At the register the total was more than either of them expected, which was true most weeks now. In the parking lot Marcus loaded bags into the trunk while Dana returned the cart, and neither of them said anything about the heat, or the price of things, or the grill.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in block letters: BATTERIES, TAPE, THE GOOD COFFEE.

"The good coffee is four dollars more," Dana said in the car, reading it over.

"It's four dollars more because it's good."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because it closed at noon and the grocery store didn't. Marcus wanted a specific kind of washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since Thanksgiving. He held up two identical-looking rubber rings and Dana said she genuinely couldn't tell the difference, so he bought both, plus a roll of plumber's tape and a box of drywall anchors he insisted they'd need eventually.

At the grocery store, they split up. This was their system. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the frozen section, comparing carts like generals reviewing troops.

"You got the strawberries," she said.

"They were on sale."

"They're going to go bad by Tuesday."

"Then we'll eat them by Tuesday."

She put a bag of frozen peas on top of them anyway, so they wouldn't get crushed. At checkout, Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and the cashier asked if they had a rewards card, and Dana said the number out loud from memory, all ten digits, the way she always did.

They unloaded the car in two trips. Marcus put things away wrong — cereal on the wrong shelf, eggs in the door — and Dana quietly fixed it while he went to look at the faucet. She heard the water shut off under the sink, then a long silence, then the tap running clean and steady.

"Fixed?" she called.

"Fixed."

She started the strawberries in a colander, rinsing them under cold water, and thought she'd probably make something with them before Tuesday after all.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in block letters: BATTERIES, TAPE, THE GOOD COFFEE. He held it against the steering wheel at the stoplight on Fremont, squinting.

"The good coffee is four dollars more," Dana said.

"The other stuff tastes like a penny."

They stopped at the hardware store first because it closed at two on Saturdays. Marcus wanted a specific washer for the bathroom faucet that had been dripping since Thanksgiving. He'd brought the old one in a sandwich bag. Dana wandered off toward the paint chips and came back with four grays fanned out like a poker hand.

"For the hallway," she said.

"They're identical."

"This one's warm. This one's basically blue."

He looked at them, then at her, and took the warm one and put it in his shirt pocket.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was at eleven-thirty. Dana pushed the cart and Marcus went ahead for produce, coming back with a cantaloupe he'd thumped and approved. They disagreed about bread — she wanted the seeded rye, he pointed out that she never finished the seeded rye — and settled on both. At the deli counter, Marcus took a number and they stood together watching the man in the paper hat slice turkey with the meditative slowness of someone who did not care about their number.

"We forgot the trash bags," Dana said in the checkout line, and Marcus jogged back for them, returning slightly out of breath, and she moved the divider bar for him.

In the parking lot, he loaded the trunk while she scraped a leaf off the windshield with her thumbnail. The washer was in his pocket next to the paint chip. He'd fix the faucet after lunch, probably. She said she'd hold the flashlight.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in handwriting that only she could read. Daniel drove because he always drove, and because Priya liked to look out the window and comment on the neighborhood's new construction.

"They tore down the blue house," she said.

"They tore that down in March."

"Did they? I liked that house."

The hardware store came first. Daniel needed a new furnace filter and had opinions about MERV ratings that Priya found unnecessary but tolerated. She wandered to the garden section while he compared boxes, and came back with a small pot of basil she hadn't planned to buy.

"For the windowsill," she said.

"We killed the last one."

"You killed the last one. You overwatered it."

At the grocery store, they split the list, which they had learned years ago was faster and prevented the arguments that came from standing together in front of the yogurt. Priya took produce and dairy; Daniel took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the bread, both slightly triumphant.

"They were out of the sourdough," Daniel said.

"There's a whole shelf of sourdough."

"Not the one you like."

She looked. He was right. They took a rye instead.

The checkout line was slow because the woman ahead of them was paying with a check, which Daniel found genuinely fascinating. Priya bagged. The total was more than they expected, as it always was, and Daniel said the thing he always said about how his mother used to feed five people on forty dollars a week.

At home they carried everything in two trips, and Priya put the basil on the kitchen windowsill above the sink while Daniel wrestled with the furnace filter in the hallway closet, swearing quietly at the bracket.

"You okay in there?"

"Fine."

"Do you want help?"

"No," he said, and then, a minute later, "Yes."


Saturday morning arrived gray and damp, the kind of October weather that made the coffee taste better. Ellen was already at the kitchen table with her laptop open, cross-referencing the pantry inventory she'd typed out in August with the list on her phone.

"We're out of olive oil," she said. "The good one and the cooking one."

Mark came in still wearing the shirt he'd slept in. "Both? How?"

"You made that pasta thing twice last week."

He conceded the point and went to shower. By nine-thirty they were in the Honda, heading first to the hardware store because the guest bathroom faucet had developed a drip that Mark had promised, in July, to fix. He came out with a washer kit and a bag of birdseed nobody had planned on.

"They're going to be gone by November," Ellen said.

"The finches stay."

The grocery store was crowded with people who'd had the same idea about beating the afternoon rush. Ellen took the cart and the list; Mark peeled off toward the deli counter for the number ticket, a division of labor that had evolved over eleven years without either of them ever discussing it. She met him in produce with a bag of gala apples, and he reported that the man ahead of him had ordered a half pound of six different things.

They disagreed briefly over cereal. Mark wanted the bran flakes with raisins. Ellen pointed out that he never finished a box of anything with raisins.

"Maybe I've changed."

"You haven't."

He put it in the cart anyway.

At the register, Ellen bagged while Mark loaded, and they discovered that they'd forgotten the olive oil entirely. He jogged back for it while she paid. In the parking lot, the rain had started, light and steady, and they loaded the trunk fast, laughing about nothing.


The list was Priya's, written on the back of an envelope in her tight, slanted hand, and Danny had already lost it twice between the driveway and the Safeway parking lot.

"Check your jacket," she said.

He checked his jacket. It was there, soft from the wash.

Inside, the store smelled like the rotisserie chickens turning behind glass. Priya took the cart because Danny steered it like a shopping cart in a dream, always drifting left. They started in produce. She pressed her thumb into an avocado and put it back, pressed another, kept it.

"Do we need cilantro?"

"You said last time we always buy cilantro and it goes bad."

"We do. It does." She took the cilantro anyway.

Danny wandered off toward the cereal and came back with a box of the sugary kind. He held it up, not quite asking.

"Fine," she said. "But you're eating it. Not the kids."

"We don't have kids."

"Exactly."

They argued mildly about brands of paper towels and agreed, as they always did, on the middle-priced ones. At the deli counter Danny took a number and they stood there together, saying nothing, watching a man in a hairnet slice turkey with enormous concentration. Priya leaned her shoulder against Danny's arm. He shifted to make room.

The line at checkout was four carts deep. Danny bagged while Priya paid, and he put the eggs in with the detergent, and she said his name in a certain way, and he moved the eggs.

Afterward they had the hardware store — furnace filters, a new washer for the leaking bathroom faucet — and the dry cleaner, where Priya's blue dress had been waiting eleven days.

At home they carried everything in from the car in two trips instead of the usual heroic one. Danny put the groceries away wrong. Priya rearranged half of them, quietly, and left the rest.


The list was Marcus's idea, written on the back of an envelope in his cramped handwriting. Dana squinted at it in the passenger seat while he backed out of the driveway.

"You wrote 'stuff for the thing,'" she said.

"The thing next weekend. Your sister's thing."

"That's helpful."

They hit the hardware store first, because it opened earlier and because Marcus had been complaining about the bathroom faucet for three weeks. He stood in aisle six holding two washers, comparing them against a photo on his phone. Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of tulip bulbs.

"It's October," he said.

"You plant them in October."

He didn't argue. She'd killed the last three things she'd planted, but the bulbs were four dollars.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts abandoned mid-aisle, a kid screaming near the bakery. Dana took the left side, Marcus the right. They'd worked out this system years ago without ever discussing it. She grabbed yogurt, spinach, the coffee he liked that cost too much. He got the meat and the cleaning supplies and stood too long in front of the cereal.

"I'm getting the sugary one," he announced when she found him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

At checkout, the total came to a hundred and forty-two dollars, which felt both outrageous and unremarkable. Marcus loaded the bags into the trunk while Dana returned the cart, and they drove home with the windows cracked because the car still smelled faintly like the rotisserie chicken.

Unloading took two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus went to fix the faucet, and she could hear him talking to himself under the sink, the particular tone he used when something wasn't going well.

"Do you need help?"

"No."

She poured herself a glass of water and waited. Twenty minutes later, he came out with wet sleeves and said it was fine now, and it was.