The rain had stopped by the time Priya finished packing, which she took as a good sign.

"Do we need the cooler?" Danny called from the kitchen. He was standing with the refrigerator door open, holding a package of turkey slices like evidence.

"For two nights? We can just buy stuff there."

"Gas station sandwiches are eight dollars now."

She came in and looked over his shoulder. There was half a loaf of bread, a bag of carrots, some string cheese. "Fine. Make sandwiches. But we're not bringing the big cooler."

They compromised on the soft-sided one, which meant Danny had to reorganize the trunk twice because the tote bag of towels wouldn't lie flat. Priya stood in the driveway with her coffee, offering suggestions he didn't want.

"You could put the towels in the back seat."

"Then Bruno has nowhere to sit."

Bruno, a shepherd mix of uncertain heritage, was already in the back seat, watching them through the window with an expression of long suffering.

They left at 9:40, an hour later than planned. Priya drove the first leg because Danny had been up until two finishing a work thing. He fell asleep somewhere around Kingston, mouth open, and woke when she pulled into a rest stop.

"You want anything?"

"Coffee. Black. And if they have those little donuts."

They didn't have the little donuts. He accepted this philosophically and took over driving while Priya scrolled through the cabin listing on her phone, checking whether the hot tub had actually been fixed like the host promised.

"It says 'recently serviced.'"

"That means nothing."

"It means something."

The mountains came into view around one o'clock, gray and unspectacular in the flat November light. Bruno stood up in the back seat and pressed his nose to the glass. Priya reached over and put her hand on Danny's knee, and he moved his hand to cover hers, briefly, before returning it to the wheel.


They left at 4:40 on Friday, which was later than Dana wanted and earlier than Marcus thought was reasonable.

The plan had come together over three or four conversations at the kitchen table, none of them longer than ten minutes. A cabin outside Asheville, because Dana's coworker had stayed there in October and wouldn't stop talking about the porch. Two nights. Marcus had checked the mileage — four hours and change — and said he'd drive the first half if she took the mountain part, since she was better at curves and he got tense passing trucks.

Packing was the argument, though it wasn't really an argument. Dana laid out layers on the bed: rain shell, fleece, the wool socks she'd bought and never worn. Marcus put three T-shirts and a toothbrush in a duffel and stood in the doorway watching her fold.

"It's two nights," he said.

"It's forty-one degrees at night up there."

"I have a jacket."

"You have a denim jacket."

He got the fleece.

They stopped at the Kroger on Bardstown Road for coffee, water, a bag of pretzels, and — after a brief negotiation in the aisle — one of those pre-made cheese and salami trays, which Marcus said was overpriced and Dana said was the point of a vacation. She paid. He carried it.

The first hour was mostly silence, the good kind. Dana scrolled through the cabin listing again on her phone, reading details aloud: fire pit, hot tub, "rustic charm." Marcus said "rustic charm" meant spiders.

Somewhere past Lexington the light went orange and long across the fields. Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down when Marcus glanced over.

"You want the aux?" he said.

"In a minute."

She ate a pretzel. Outside, the hills started, low and blue and getting closer.


They left later than planned, which Nora had predicted on Thursday and Daniel had denied on Friday morning. By the time the car was loaded — one duffel each, a cooler that didn't quite close, the good pillow because Daniel couldn't sleep on hotel foam — it was almost eleven.

"Do you want the aux or should I just put on the podcast?" Nora asked, buckling in.

"Podcast. But not the murder one. I want to arrive in a good mood."

They took 89 north out of the city, past the outlet malls and the exit for his mother's town, which they both noticed and neither mentioned. Nora drove the first leg because she liked highway driving and Daniel didn't. He held the coffees between his knees at the tolls.

The plan, such as it was, involved a rented cabin outside Woodstock, two nights, a hike on Saturday if the weather held. Nora had found it on a Tuesday at work and sent the link with three exclamation points; Daniel had said "book it" without looking closely at the price and then, later that night, looked closely at the price and said nothing.

They stopped at a gas station in Lebanon for snacks. Daniel wanted the peanut M&M's. Nora wanted the pretzels but bought both because the checkout took too long to negotiate.

"There's no dishwasher," she said, back in the car, scrolling the listing. "I forgot about that part."

"We'll eat off paper plates."

"We didn't bring paper plates."

"Then we'll wash three dishes over two days. Nora. It's fine."

She laughed, which he'd been going for, and pulled back onto the road.

The cabin, when they found it — after one wrong turn onto a gravel drive belonging to somebody's actual house — was smaller than the photos and colder inside. Daniel figured out the thermostat. Nora opened the wine before she took off her coat.


Maya was already awake when the alarm went off, staring at the ceiling and mentally repacking the cooler. She nudged Dev, who groaned into his pillow.

"You said five-thirty," she reminded him.

"I said five-thirty was aspirational."

They compromised on six-fifteen. Dev made coffee in the travel mugs while Maya loaded the car, arranging the duffel bags so the ice chest could sit flat. She'd printed directions the night before, not because she didn't trust her phone, but because the cabin they'd rented outside Hocking Hills claimed spotty service, and Dev had a habit of taking exits at random.

"Did you get the sunscreen?" she called through the screen door.

"You have it. You put it in the tote."

She checked. She did.

The first hour was quiet, Ohio flattening out under a gray-pink sky. Dev drove with one hand and ate a granola bar with the other. Around Columbus, they argued mildly about whether to stop at the Waffle House or push through to a diner Maya's coworker had recommended in Logan. The Waffle House won on the grounds that it was visible from the exit ramp.

Inside, Maya ordered hash browns scattered and smothered, and Dev got the same and then pretended he hadn't copied her. They talked about nothing—whether his sister would actually come to Thanksgiving, whether the landlord would ever fix the disposal, whether two nights was long enough to feel like a real trip.

"It's enough," Dev said. "We'll be back Sunday afternoon. Enough time to do laundry."

"That's a depressing way to define a vacation."

"It's realistic."

Back on the road, Maya put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed. The trees thickened. She found a radio station playing something from high school, and they both knew the words, and neither of them mentioned it.


They left Thursday night instead of Friday morning, which had been Priya's idea. "Traffic," she'd said, and Dan had agreed because she was usually right about traffic.

The car was a 2014 Civic with a cracked taillight they kept meaning to fix. Dan loaded the trunk while Priya went back inside twice—once for the phone charger, once because she couldn't remember whether she'd unplugged the space heater. She had.

"Did you get the cooler?" she asked, buckling in.

"It's behind your seat."

"With the ice?"

"With the ice packs. Ice melts."

They took 84 east out of Hartford toward the Berkshires. Priya drove the first hour because Dan had worked a ten-hour shift and his eyes felt sandy. She played a podcast about a bank robbery in 1987, and he fell asleep somewhere around Sturbridge and woke up when she took the exit for gas.

"You want anything?" she asked, pumping.

"Coffee. Not the flavored kind."

"They're going to have the flavored kind."

"Then whatever's least offensive."

She came back with two black coffees and a bag of pretzels and they ate them in the car with the heat running while a truck idled beside them.

The Airbnb was a converted barn loft outside Lee, $340 for two nights, split. The host had left the key in a lockbox and a note about the wood stove that Dan read twice and still didn't fully understand. Priya found the thermostat instead.

They unpacked in ten minutes. There wasn't much—one duffel each, a paper bag of groceries, her book, his laptop that he'd promised not to open.

"There's a diner," she said, scrolling. "Opens at six."

"Six is early."

"We could go at eight."

"Eight's fine."

Outside the window there was nothing but dark and the shape of trees. They went to bed at eleven, which for them was late.


The rain started sometime after midnight, and by six-thirty Maya could hear it hitting the window air conditioner in a way that meant they'd be driving in it.

"We could leave later," Danny said from the closet, holding two nearly identical flannel shirts. "Wait it out."

"It's supposed to rain until noon in Pittsburgh too." She was rolling socks. "Take the green one. The other one has the thing on the collar."

He looked at the collar, found the thing, and put the shirt back.

They had two nights at a cabin outside Ohiopyle, booked in February when the winter had felt endless and a weekend in May had seemed like a reasonable thing to promise themselves. Now it was here and Maya kept mentally itemizing the week she was leaving behind — the report due Tuesday, the dentist appointment she'd have to move.

Danny carried the cooler down first. He came back up wet.

"I put the beer in already," he said. "And that pasta salad."

"The one from Tuesday?"

"It's fine."

"It's five days old."

He considered this. "It's four days old."

She let it go, then went and got the pasta salad out while he was checking the tire pressure, and threw it away, and put the container in the sink so it looked like they'd eaten it.

They stopped for gas on Route 30 and argued mildly about whether to get coffee there or wait for the good place in Latrobe. Danny wanted to wait. Maya was already tired and said so, and he shrugged and pumped the gas and she went in and came out with two large coffees and a bag of pretzels.

"You're welcome," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to be smug about the Latrobe place."

"I still might."

The rain thinned out around Greensburg. Danny put on a podcast neither of them listened to.


The rain hadn't started yet when Dev carried the duffel out to the car, but the sky over the apartment complex had gone the color of dishwater. Maya was still inside, standing in front of the open refrigerator with her hands on her hips.

"The yogurt's going to go bad," she called.

"Bring it."

"To a cabin?"

"Bring the yogurt, Maya."

She brought the yogurt, and also the half-loaf of sourdough, and a jar of olives neither of them remembered buying. Dev had already loaded the cooler with beer and the good cheese from the place on Fifth, which he'd insisted on despite the price, and she'd let him because he'd been quiet all week about the layoffs at work and this seemed like a small thing to give him.

They argued briefly about the route. Dev wanted 81 because it was faster; Maya wanted the state road because of the produce stand outside Middletown that sold peaches in July, though it was October now and the stand was probably shuttered. They took 81.

Forty minutes in, she put her feet on the dashboard and he told her not to, and she took them down, and then put them back up twenty minutes later, and he didn't say anything.

"Did you lock the balcony door?"

"Yes."

"Actually lock it, or push it?"

"I locked it."

She looked at him. He kept his eyes on the road.

"I'm ninety percent," he said.

"That's not lockingest."

"Ninety percent is fine. The cat can't reach the latch."

They stopped at a gas station outside Harrisonburg and split a bag of pretzels standing beside the car while the tank filled. The rain arrived then, light, more mist than weather. Maya pulled her hood up. Dev checked his phone, found nothing worth reading, and put it away.

"Two more hours," he said.

"Okay," she said, and got back in.


The rain had stopped by the time Nora finished packing, which felt like a sign, though she didn't say so out loud because Dev would have made fun of her.

"Do we need the cooler?" he called from the kitchen.

"For a two-hour drive?"

"For the drive back. If we get cheese."

She considered this. They were going to Hudson, not Vermont, but the odds of Dev buying cheese somewhere were not zero. "Bring it. But you're carrying it."

He was already carrying it, wedged under one arm, keys in his other hand. He'd showered but hadn't shaved, and he was wearing the fleece she'd tried to donate twice.

The car had been sitting in the lot behind their building for eleven days, and it started with a hesitation that made them both go quiet for a second. Then it caught.

"Music or podcast," Dev said.

"Music until Poughkeepsie."

They stopped at the Stewart's on Route 9 because Nora wanted iced coffee and Dev wanted to look at the beef jerky, which he did for a full four minutes without buying any. She waited by the door, holding both coffees, watching a woman try to convince a toddler that the ice cream case was closed.

"Nothing?" she said, when he came out.

"It's all twelve dollars now."

The inn had emailed twice about check-in, both times to Dev, who had not read either email. Nora pulled them up at a red light and read the relevant part aloud: after four, park in the rear, the door code was their reservation number.

"Do you know our reservation number?"

"It's in the other email."

"Which you also didn't read."

"I'm driving."

She found it. She wrote it on the back of a receipt and put it in the cup holder, where it immediately absorbed a ring of coffee, and they kept going north.


Maya found the cooler in the hall closet behind a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. She dragged it into the kitchen and popped the lid, which released a faint smell of old lake water.

"This needs to be washed," she called.

Danny came in holding his phone, scrolling through a list of cabins. "Two hours and forty minutes if we leave before three. Three and a half if we don't."

"So we leave before three."

"You said that last time."

She filled the cooler with soapy water and let it sit. On the counter she'd made two piles: things they definitely needed, things they might. Coffee went in the definite pile. The French press went in the maybe pile, then the definite pile, then back to maybe when Danny pointed out the cabin listing mentioned a coffee maker.

"Listings lie," Maya said, but she left it in maybe.

They argued briefly about the dog. Her sister could take him, but her sister lived forty minutes the wrong direction. In the end Danny called the neighbor, who agreed to come by twice a day, and they left a note on the counter with the feeding times written out in Danny's block capitals.

Packing took longer than either expected. Danny couldn't find his hiking boots and discovered them under the bed, one of them chewed at the heel. Maya packed three sweaters for two nights and didn't apologize for it.

They left at 3:15. Danny drove the first stretch while Maya worked the aux cord, skipping songs after fifteen seconds until he asked her to please just pick one. They stopped at a gas station outside Danville for jerky and a bag of ice, and Maya paid because Danny had gotten the tank.

Past the county line the road opened up. Maya put her feet on the dash. Danny didn't tell her not to.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on the night before and now clearly regretted. She lay face-down while Marcus got up and started the coffee.

"We could leave at seven instead," he called from the kitchen.

"Then we hit traffic through Hartford." Her voice was muffled by the pillow. "Just give me ten minutes."

They had booked the cabin three weeks ago, back when October still felt theoretical. It was two hours north, a rental with a wood stove and, according to the listing, a "rustic outdoor shower," which Dana had pointed out was just a hose.

Packing had happened in stages. Marcus had done his the night before—two shirts, jeans, the good boots—and then spent forty minutes looking for the French press because Dana refused to drink whatever the cabin provided. Dana packed in the morning, standing over the open duffel in her towel, holding up two sweaters.

"Take both," Marcus said.

"That's four sweaters."

"So take four sweaters."

She took three. In the car, they argued mildly about whether to stop for breakfast now or wait until the halfway point, where there was supposedly a diner Marcus's coworker had recommended. Dana wanted to wait. Marcus was hungry now. They compromised at a gas station where he bought a banana and a bag of pretzels and she got a coffee that turned out to be terrible.

The highway was empty. Dana drove, because she always drove the first leg, and Marcus put on a podcast neither of them ended up listening to. Somewhere past Springfield the trees started actually turning, the reds coming in patchy against the pines.

"Okay," Dana said. "This was a good idea."

Marcus adjusted the vent, which was blowing cold on his hands, and said that it was.


The car was packed by seven-fifteen, which was later than Dana wanted but earlier than Mark had predicted, so they called it even.

"Did you grab the thermos?" she asked, standing in the doorway with her keys already in hand.

"It's in the back seat. With the blanket, the good one, not the one the dog sleeps on."

She went to check anyway. He didn't take it personally; she'd checked the stove three times too, and he'd stopped mentioning it years ago.

The plan was Asheville, two nights, a bed-and-breakfast Dana had found in October and sat on until the rates dropped. Mark had wanted to camp. They'd discussed it over dinner in a way that wasn't quite an argument, and then Dana had said, "It's going to be forty degrees at night," and that had been the end of it. He still brought the camp stove, tucked behind the spare tire, as a kind of joke he hadn't decided whether to tell.

They stopped for gas outside Greenville. Mark went in for coffee and came back with two, plus a bag of peanut M&M's he set in the cupholder without comment.

"You're not going to eat those before eleven," Dana said.

"I might."

"You'll be sick."

"Then I'll be sick." He opened the bag.

Traffic thinned out past the interchange. Dana drove the first leg because she always did, and Mark navigated, though the phone did most of it. He read her the reviews of a barbecue place near Hendersonville, skipping the bad ones out loud until she made him read those too.

Around ten the mountains started showing up in the windshield, blue and layered like something painted badly on purpose.

"We should have left at six," Dana said.

"We're fine."

She reached over. He handed her the M&M's without being asked.


The forecast said rain Saturday afternoon, so Nadia argued for leaving Friday night instead of early Saturday morning.

"We'll hit traffic on the 5," Peter said. He was folding a shirt on the bed, badly, the way he always did.

"We'll hit traffic either way. At least Friday night we get there in time for dinner."

He considered this, then unfolded the shirt and started over. "Fine. But I'm not driving the whole way."

They packed in forty minutes, which was a record. Nadia took the toiletries because Peter always forgot something crucial — floss, contact solution, the small pharmacy of allergy pills he needed in spring. Peter handled the cooler: two beers, string cheese, the leftover pasta salad neither of them wanted to admit was going bad.

The cabin belonged to Peter's coworker, who'd offered it in the vague way people offer things. Peter had followed up twice before getting the lockbox code, which he'd written on a receipt now buried somewhere in his wallet.

"You have the code?"

"I have the code."

"Say the code."

"Four-one-nine-two." He paused. "Or nine-two-four-one."

Nadia found it in the text thread on her phone and read it aloud. He repeated it three times.

They left at 6:40. Peter drove first while Nadia fought with the aux cord, which had developed a short. She held it at a particular angle for eleven miles and then gave up, and they listened to a podcast about a shipwreck instead.

Outside Bakersfield they stopped for gas and Nadia bought a bag of sunflower seeds she didn't want, just to have something to do with her hands. Peter came out of the bathroom drying his palms on his jeans.

"You want to switch?"

"Not yet."

She got back in the passenger seat, cracked the window, and put her bare feet on the dash. He didn't tell her not to.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine and vinyl, and Dana rolled the window down two inches before they'd even left the lot.

"You have the confirmation?" Miguel asked.

"Screenshot. And I emailed it to myself." She held up her phone as proof, then set it in the cup holder face-down, which he'd learned meant she intended to actually look out the window for a while.

They'd argued mildly about leaving Friday night versus Saturday morning. Miguel had wanted to beat traffic; Dana had a call at four that she couldn't move. In the end they'd compromised into the worst of both, pulling onto the highway at 6:40 with the sun going orange behind the overpasses and every other car in the state apparently headed the same direction.

"There's a place in Whitmore," Dana said, thumbing through her phone again. "Diner. Four point three stars. Reviews say the pie's overrated but the meatloaf is good."

"Who orders meatloaf at a diner?"

"People with sense."

They stopped anyway. The parking lot was gravel and the door had a bell on it. Miguel got a patty melt, Dana got the meatloaf, and they split an order of onion rings neither of them had planned on. She stole the crispy ones. He let her.

Back in the car, she took the wheel because he'd started doing the thing where he blinked too long. The cabin they'd booked was still ninety minutes out, up a road that the listing described as "scenic" and the reviews described as "unpaved." Miguel fell asleep somewhere around the county line, head against the window, and Dana turned the radio down rather than off.

When she finally pulled up to the little house, the porch light was on, left by the owner. She sat for a second with the engine ticking before she woke him.

"We're here," she said.

He rubbed his eyes. "Did you find it okay?"

"Obviously."


Maya found the cooler in the back of the hall closet, behind the winter coats, and dragged it out with her foot.

"It smells like something died in here," she called.

Devon came in holding two phones, hers and his, comparing weather apps. "Mine says rain Saturday afternoon. Yours says clear."

"Mine's usually right."

"Yours is optimistic." He set the phones down and took the cooler outside to hose it out on the patio while she pulled things from the fridge—half a rotisserie chicken, the good mustard, a bag of baby carrots that had gone slightly rubbery. She threw the carrots away and felt guilty about it.

They'd booked the cabin six weeks ago, back when two nights outside Asheville seemed like a reasonable amount of time to be gone. Now it was Friday at four-thirty and Devon still had to send a file to his manager.

"Ten minutes," he said, laptop open on the kitchen counter. "Then I'm done."

Maya packed anyway. She put in the flannel sheets even though the listing said linens provided, because last time the linens had been thin as tissue paper and she'd woken at three in the morning cold. She packed the cribbage board. She packed the paperback she'd been carrying to and from work for a month without opening.

At five-forty they pulled out of the driveway. Devon drove because he liked to and she didn't. Twenty minutes down I-40 she realized she'd left her contact case on the bathroom sink.

"We can buy one," he said. "There's a Walgreens in Marion."

"That's forty minutes away."

"So we stop in forty minutes." He reached over and rested his hand on her knee, then took it back to change lanes. "Do you want the aux or should I keep going with this?"

She looked at the podcast title on the screen, some history thing he'd been saving.

"Keep going," she said. "I'll listen."


They left Thursday night to beat the traffic, which Priya had insisted on for three weeks and Devon had resisted until Wednesday, when he checked the map and saw the red line thickening across the bridge like a wound.

"Toll pass," she said from the passenger seat, patting the glove compartment.

"It's in there. I checked twice."

"You said that in November."

"In November I was wrong. This is a different situation entirely."

They stopped at the grocery store on Halsted because Priya refused to pay resort prices for coffee, and because the cabin listing said the kitchen was fully stocked, which they had learned meant a rusted colander and half a bottle of soy sauce. Devon pushed the cart. She loaded it with eggs, a loaf of sourdough, two avocados she pressed with her thumb and rejected before finding acceptable ones, and a box of the cereal he liked but never bought himself.

"We don't need this," he said, holding it up.

"You'll eat it."

"I'll eat it," he agreed, and put it back in the cart.

The drive took four hours and ten minutes. She fell asleep somewhere past the state line with her jacket bunched against the window, and he turned the podcast down and then off, driving in the dark with the radio's green numbers as the only light. When she woke up, she asked where they were, and he said he didn't know exactly, some town with a Dairy Queen, and she said that was every town.

The cabin key was under a plastic rock that was obviously a plastic rock. Inside smelled like cedar and dust. Devon carried the cooler. Priya found the thermostat and cranked it, then stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed, looking at the sagging couch, the moose print, the window facing the trees.

"It's good," she said. "This is good."

He set down the cooler and agreed.


They left later than planned, which Nora had predicted on Thursday when Dev said seven-thirty like it was a fact of nature.

By the time the car was loaded, it was almost nine. The cooler took up more of the trunk than either of them expected, mostly because Dev had packed six seltzers, two of which nobody would drink.

"Do we need the big blanket?" Nora asked from the driveway, holding it folded against her chest.

"It's supposed to be fifty at night."

"That's not an answer."

"Bring it," he said, and she put it in the back seat instead of the trunk, where it would slump sideways at every turn for the next three hours.

The cabin was outside Hancock, two bedrooms and a wood stove, rented for a hundred and forty a night from a woman named Pat who left a laminated sheet about the septic system on the counter. They'd chosen it in October, at the kitchen table, after twenty minutes of scrolling and Nora saying she didn't care and then vetoing four places.

On the drive Dev handled the music and Nora handled the map, though the map was her phone and mostly she read the reviews out loud. They stopped in Deposit for gas and coffee and a bathroom that required a key attached to a wooden spoon. Nora bought a bag of pretzels. Dev pumped and then squeegeed the windshield badly, leaving a streak across the passenger side that she noticed for the rest of the trip and mentioned twice.

They got in a little after noon. The key was under the flowerpot, as promised. The place smelled like cold ash and lemon cleaner.

"It's smaller than the pictures," Nora said.

"They always are."

She opened a window anyway. He went out to get the cooler.


Maya found the road atlas in the closet behind the winter coats, its spine cracked from a trip they'd taken four years ago, before the apartment, before the shared checking account.

"We have phones," Dev said from the kitchen table, where he was pricing motels in Galena.

"Phones die. Also I like the atlas." She spread it across the counter, flattening Illinois with her palm. "Two hundred forty miles. That's four hours if we don't stop."

"We'll stop. You always want coffee at hour two."

He was right, so she didn't argue. He'd found a place for eighty-nine a night, a converted farmhouse with a photo of a claw-foot tub. She looked over his shoulder and said it seemed fine, though privately she wondered if the mattress would be one of those sagging ones. She decided not to mention it. He'd spent twenty minutes looking.

Friday they left at four-fifteen instead of three, because Dev's last call ran long and Maya couldn't find the phone charger that worked in his car. She packed a bag of pretzels, two apples, and the good sunscreen. He backed out of the parking space and then pulled back in, went upstairs, and returned with the atlas, which she'd left on the counter after all.

The interstate was thick with everyone else's Friday. Dev drove with his wrist over the top of the wheel. Maya put on a podcast, then turned it off because he kept talking over it, then didn't put it back on.

Somewhere past Rockford the fields opened up and the light went low and orange across them, and she said, "Okay, this," and he said, "Yeah."

At a gas station in Freeport she got the coffee. It was terrible. He drank half of hers anyway, standing beside the car with the door open, and they agreed they'd get a real breakfast in the morning.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, which Priya noticed first and complained about second, after she'd already adjusted the passenger seat twice.

"We could have taken my car," Dev said.

"Your car makes that noise on hills."

"It's a fan belt. Probably."

She let that go and unfolded the printout she'd made at work, a list in her small handwriting: Friday drive, Saturday the state park, Sunday brunch and home by four. Dev had teased her about printing it, but he'd also taken a picture of it with his phone, in case.

They'd packed the night before, mostly. Priya had packed. Dev had contributed a duffel bag containing three shirts, no socks, and the good camera he never used.

"Did you unplug the coffee maker?" she asked, forty minutes onto the interstate.

"It doesn't stay hot."

"It has a light."

"The light is fine, Priya."

They stopped in Hagerstown for gas and gum and to argue mildly about whether to eat now or wait for the diner outside the park that Dev's coworker had recommended, which might not exist anymore. They waited. Priya ate half a bag of pretzels from the glove compartment and offered him the other half without looking over.

Around four, the sky went the color of dishwater and stayed that way. Dev drove with both hands on the wheel through a stretch of rain that made the semis look enormous. Priya put on a podcast about a hotel fire, then turned it off because it was upsetting, then found a station playing country music, which they both pretended not to enjoy.

The motel was cinderblock, painted a hopeful yellow. The woman at the desk asked if they wanted one key or two.

"Two," Priya said, "he loses things."

The room had two double beds. They pushed them together without discussing it, then went out to find the diner, which existed.


Maya found the cooler in the back of the closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they hadn't unpacked in two years.

"It smells like a lake," she said, holding it at arm's length.

Devon looked up from the atlas he'd insisted on buying at a gas station in March, purely for the novelty. "It smells like the last time we used it. Which was a lake."

They were leaving Friday after his shift ended, driving three hours north to a cabin his coworker's sister rented out cheap in the off-season. Maya had suggested a hotel in the city instead, something with room service, but Devon wanted trees. They'd compromised on trees with decent Wi-Fi.

Packing took longer than the drive would. Maya laid out two sweaters and then put one back. Devon brought four books and a deck of cards, which Maya pointed out he never wanted to play with.

"I'll want to this time," he said.

At the grocery store they split up. Maya got coffee, half-and-half, eggs, and a bag of oranges. Devon returned with tortilla chips, two kinds of salsa, and a frozen pizza.

"There might not be an oven," she said.

"There's an oven. Marcy said there's an oven."

"Marcy also said there was a hot tub."

"She said there used to be a hot tub."

They got on the road at 5:40, twenty minutes behind schedule because Devon couldn't find his sunglasses. Maya drove the first leg while he fiddled with the radio, settling eventually on a country station because it was the only thing coming in clearly.

Outside Kingsley the traffic thinned and the light went orange over the fields. Maya rolled her window down two inches. Devon put his hand on her knee, then took it back to eat chips.

"We forgot towels," Maya said.

Devon thought about it. "Marcy probably has towels."

She let it go. They drove.


Maya had the atlas open on the kitchen table, which Devin found endearing and useless, since her phone was right there beside it.

"Three hours and twenty minutes," she said. "But that's assuming we leave before eight."

"We're not leaving before eight."

"We could."

"You have never left anywhere before eight in your life."

She conceded this with a shrug and started listing what they'd need. The cabin had a kitchen, according to the listing, but the listing also said "cozy," which she'd learned to read as small. Devin said he'd bring the cast iron pan. Maya said that was insane, that they were driving up for two nights, that surely a rented cabin had a pan.

"It has a pan. It doesn't have a good pan."

They compromised: no cast iron, but Devin got to bring his own coffee and the little hand grinder. Maya packed the cooler with eggs, a carton of cream, half a loaf of bread, and the block of cheddar from the back of the fridge that needed using. She texted her sister to ask if she'd water the plants, then remembered her sister was in Denver, and texted their neighbor Rosalie instead.

They left at nine-fifteen. Devin drove the first stretch while Maya read aloud from a list of things to do near Hawley, most of which involved antique stores. Somewhere past Allentown they stopped for gas and she bought two coffees and a bag of pretzels, and he ate the pretzels while she took over driving.

"Did you lock the back door?" she asked, an hour later.

He thought about it. "Yes."

"You're sure?"

"I'm reasonably sure."

She let it go. The trees on either side of the road had started to turn, not all at once but in patches, like something spilled. She rolled her window down two inches and left it there the rest of the way.


They'd been arguing about the cooler since Thursday.

"It's a two-hour drive," Priya said, folding a sweatshirt into the duffel. "We don't need a cooler."

Marcus stood in the kitchen doorway holding the cooler like evidence. "Gas station sandwiches cost nine dollars now. Nine. And they're wet."

"Wet."

"The bread. It's wet." He set the cooler down on the counter anyway and started pulling things from the fridge — the leftover roast chicken, a container of grapes, the good mustard. Priya watched him wedge a bag of ice around it all and decided not to mention that the chicken had been in there since Sunday.

They'd booked the cabin in March, back when October seemed theoretical. Now it was Friday afternoon, and the woman who ran the place had texted a photo of the lockbox with the code partially obscured by her thumb.

"Is that a six or an eight," Marcus said, squinting at Priya's phone.

"It's a five."

"How is that a five."

"Because the other one's a six and they look different." She took the phone back. "I'll call her from the road."

They loaded the car in the small awkward way they always did, Priya handing things through the hatch, Marcus arranging them by some private logic she'd learned not to interfere with. He put the cooler behind the driver's seat. She put her book in the door pocket and then moved it to her lap.

Two blocks from the apartment she said, "Did you unplug the space heater?"

He pulled over without answering, jogged back, and returned four minutes later slightly out of breath. "It was unplugged."

"Okay."

"I checked the stove too."

"Thank you." She reached over and turned the radio to the station that came in clearest, and they drove out past the reservoir, the light going long and yellow across the water, both of them quiet in the good way.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, something vaguely pine-adjacent. Nora adjusted the passenger seat back and forth twice before settling.

"Did you bring the charger?" she asked.

"Which one?"

"The long one. For the phone mount."

Daniel patted his jacket pocket, then the console, then twisted around to check the back seat where his duffel sat next to her tote bag. "It's in the kitchen. On the counter by the toaster."

"We can get one at a gas station."

"For eleven dollars."

"For eleven dollars," she agreed, and pulled up the directions on her phone anyway, propping it against the cup holder at an angle where she could just see it.

They'd argued mildly about the timing. He wanted to leave Friday after work, get the driving done, wake up already there. She thought that meant arriving at ten-thirty at night, exhausted, in a town where nothing would be open. They'd compromised on Saturday at six a.m., which meant neither of them had really slept well, both waking at intervals to check the time.

The cabin belonged to his coworker's parents. Two nights, no charge, a request that they strip the beds before leaving. Nora had looked it up on a real estate site and found photos from a decade ago: knotty pine walls, a green couch, a screened porch.

Forty minutes in, they stopped for coffee and the charger. Daniel came back with the cable and two egg sandwiches she hadn't asked for but ate.

"There's a farmers market," she said, scrolling. "But it ends at noon."

"We'll be there by nine."

"Then we should go."

"Sure."

She wrote it in her notes app, under a list that already included *hike?* and *check if there's a coffee maker*. Outside, the highway opened into farmland, the sun coming up on their right, low and orange through the windshield.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine and something chemical underneath. Dana adjusted the mirror while Theo loaded their bags into the trunk, the duffel first, then the cooler he'd insisted on packing even though the cabin had a refrigerator.

"You brought the eggs," she said when he got in.

"We'd have to buy a whole dozen up there and use two."

"So we're driving eggs across three counties."

"Four, technically." He pulled up the directions on his phone and mounted it crooked, then straightened it. "There's construction on 90 supposedly. We could take the state route."

"How much longer?"

"Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five."

Dana thought about it. She'd been the one to suggest the trip, back in February, when it seemed impossible that March would ever end. Now it was a Friday in late April and she'd left work at two, telling her manager she had an appointment, which was almost true.

"Take the state route," she said. "I don't want to sit."

They stopped for gas outside the city and Theo went in for coffee while she pumped. He came back with two cups and a bag of those pretzel bites she liked, the ones filled with cheese, and she didn't say anything but she took the bag.

The state route ran past dairy farms and a shuttered drive-in theater with its screen still standing, gray and blank. Dana drove the first hour. They argued mildly about whether to stop at an antique barn — Theo wanted to, Dana pointed out they had forty minutes of daylight left and no idea what the cabin's driveway looked like — and settled on stopping tomorrow, on the way back, which they both knew probably wouldn't happen.

Around six they pulled into a gravel lot beside a lake that was smaller than the pictures. Theo found the lockbox on the second try.

"There's a canoe," he said.

"There's a canoe," Dana agreed, and started unloading the eggs.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine and something chemical. Dana adjusted the seat forward twice before finding the right distance to the pedals.

"You have the confirmation email?" she asked.

Wes held up his phone without looking away from the folded map he'd insisted on bringing. "Screenshot. And I wrote the address on the back of a receipt, in case."

"In case of what, exactly?"

"Solar flare."

They'd argued mildly about departure time for three days. Dana wanted to leave Friday after work and drive the four hours in the dark, arriving late but with a full Saturday. Wes wanted to sleep in and leave at eight. They compromised at six-thirty Saturday morning, which meant Dana had packed the night before and Wes had thrown things into a duffel while the coffee brewed.

Outside Harrisburg they stopped for gas and Wes came back from the mini-mart with two coffees, a bag of pretzels, and a small plastic dinosaur.

"It was fifty cents."

"You don't have to justify a dinosaur."

He set it on the dashboard, where it slid off at the first turn.

Around ten she let him drive. He drove slower than she did, staying in the right lane, which annoyed her, and she read her book and didn't mention it. He put on a podcast about shipwrecks. She fell asleep for forty minutes and woke with a crease in her cheek from the seatbelt.

The cabin was smaller than the photos suggested, the way they always are. One room, a woodstove, a loft with a mattress. Wes found the lockbox on the third try. Dana opened windows. There was a note from the owner about the well water tasting like iron but being fine to drink.

"I forgot a towel," Wes said.

"I brought four."

He nodded, unsurprised, and went out to look at the creek.


On Thursday night, Priya spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, which Daniel found charming and slightly ridiculous, since her phone was right there.

"Humor me," she said. "I like seeing the whole state at once."

They had two days. Daniel had to be back Sunday evening for a shift he'd already tried and failed to trade away. Priya traced a line north with her finger, toward a lake town she'd read about, three and a half hours if traffic cooperated.

"Or we go west," Daniel said. "Cheaper. And there's that diner you liked."

"The one with the pie?"

"The one with the pie."

They went north anyway. Priya booked a room at a place with mediocre reviews but a photo of a porch she couldn't stop looking at. Daniel put the cooler in the hallway so they wouldn't forget it, then spent twenty minutes hunting for the good sleeping bag before remembering they'd lent it to his brother in March.

They left at six-forty Friday morning, later than planned. Priya drove the first stretch while Daniel navigated and dispensed coffee. Somewhere past the second toll they argued mildly about whether to stop for breakfast or push through; she wanted to push, he was hungry, and they compromised at a gas station where he bought a banana and a sausage biscuit and she got a bag of pretzels she ate one at a time.

The lake, when they finally saw it through the trees, was gray and larger than either had pictured. The room smelled faintly of cedar. Daniel tested the mattress by sitting down hard on it, which he did in every hotel, a habit Priya had stopped commenting on years ago.

"Walk before dinner?" she said.

He was already untying his boots to put on the other pair. "Give me a minute."

She waited by the door, jacket on, watching the water change color.


The forecast said rain Saturday afternoon, so Dana moved the hike to Saturday morning and told Wes they'd have to leave by six.

"Six," he said, not looking up from the cooler he was packing. "That's a real number to you."

"It's two hours to the trailhead. Then we have to find parking."

He put in four beers and she took one out, replacing it with a bottle of the seltzer he'd started drinking in July and then stopped mentioning. Neither of them said anything about it.

They argued mildly about the tent. Dana wanted to book a cabin, since the site they'd looked at had a two-night minimum and they only had one, but Wes had already reserved a walk-in spot at the state park for twenty-four dollars, and pointed this out twice. She agreed on the condition that he pack the good sleeping pads, not the foam ones from his sister.

Friday night he came home late from the shop with a bag of ice that had already begun to sweat through the paper, and found that she'd loaded the car alone. The trunk was arranged in a way he wouldn't have chosen. He didn't rearrange it.

They left at six-twenty. Dana drove the first leg because she liked the highway and he didn't, and he held her coffee at the on-ramp and passed it back without being asked. Somewhere past the reservoir he found a station playing something they both tolerated and left it there.

At the gas station outside Millerton she got out to use the bathroom and came back with two bad donuts and a map of the park, which was free, and which they didn't need since they had the app, but she liked to have one.

"Rain's moved to Sunday," Wes said, holding up his phone.

Dana buckled her seatbelt. "Then we can take the long trail."


On Thursday night, Maya spread a map across the coffee table — an actual paper one, folded wrong, from the glove compartment.

"We could just use my phone," Danny said.

"I like seeing the whole thing at once." She traced a line north with her finger. "Two hours to the lake, or three and a half to the coast."

"Coast means we're in the car more than we're anywhere."

"Lake it is."

They agreed on leaving Saturday at eight, which meant, realistically, eight-forty. Danny wanted to bring the cooler; Maya pointed out they were staying at a place with a kitchen. He brought the cooler anyway, for drinks on the drive, and she didn't argue because he'd already carried it up from the basement.

Friday after work they went to the grocery store together, which they rarely did. Danny put a family-size bag of chips in the cart. Maya took it out, then put it back.

"Eggs?" she asked.

"There's four at home."

"That's two breakfasts."

"That's fine."

She bought a dozen.

Saturday morning Danny found the car keys in his jacket pocket, where he'd said they weren't. Maya locked the apartment door, then unlocked it to check the stove, then locked it again. Danny waited in the driver's seat with the engine running, scrolling through something, and didn't comment.

They stopped for gas twenty minutes in. Maya went inside for coffee and came back with two, plus a package of those orange peanut-butter crackers Danny liked and never bought for himself. He noticed but only said thanks.

By ten-fifteen the highway had narrowed to two lanes and the shoulders had gone from gravel to pine needles. Maya put her bare feet on the dashboard. Danny said something about her socks in the footwell and she said she'd get them later.

Neither of them turned on the radio. The windows were down. It was enough.


The Friday afternoon light came in slanted through the kitchen window while Dana packed the cooler. She wedged a bag of baby carrots between two seltzers and looked up.

"Did you print the reservation?"

"They emailed it," Marcus said. He was crouched by the front door, tightening the strap on his duffel. "You don't need paper anymore."

"You said that about the campsite in June."

"That was different. That place was run by a guy named Earl who had a landline."

Dana laughed and shut the cooler. They had settled on Asheville because it was four hours away, because neither of them wanted to fly, and because Marcus's coworker had described a bakery there with such specificity that it seemed rude not to go. The hotel was a bland chain off the highway, which had been Dana's argument — she'd rather spend money on food than on a lobby with exposed brick.

Marcus carried the cooler out to the Civic while Dana went through the apartment turning things off. She unplugged the toaster, checked the back burner twice, and left the hallway lamp on a timer for the cat, who watched all of this from the arm of the couch with visible contempt.

"Rita's coming Saturday to feed her," Dana said, climbing into the passenger seat.

"You told her about the pills?"

"I texted her a photo of the bottle."

They stopped for gas eleven minutes into the drive, which Marcus had known would happen and had chosen not to comment on. Dana went inside and came back with two coffees and a bag of pretzels.

"They didn't have the good creamer," she said.

"Tragic."

She handed him his cup and he set it in the holder without drinking it yet, waiting for it to cool. The interstate opened up ahead of them, mostly trucks. Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down again, and started looking for something to listen to.


Nadia found the cooler in the back of the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never taken down until February.

"It smells like a lake," she said, holding it at arm's length.

Owen leaned around the doorframe with his toothbrush in his mouth. "That's because it went to a lake. In 2021." He spat into the sink. "I'll rinse it out. Baking soda."

They were leaving for Asheville at seven the next morning, which meant they would leave at eight fifteen, because they always did. Owen printed the reservation confirmation even though Nadia told him nobody needed paper anymore. The cabin had a hot tub, which was the whole reason she'd picked it, and a gravel driveway the listing warned was steep.

"Do we bring the good pillows or the guest pillows?" she asked.

"Whose pillows are the guest pillows?"

"The flat ones. From your old apartment."

He considered this seriously. "Good pillows. It's two nights."

They argued mildly about groceries in the Publix on Friday evening, standing in the pasta aisle under the fluorescent hum. Owen wanted to buy steaks and cook them properly. Nadia pointed out that they'd get in at four and be tired and would end up eating cereal. They compromised: steaks, plus a frozen pizza as insurance. She put a bag of limes in the cart without explaining, and he didn't ask.

Saturday morning she drove first. Owen sat with his socked feet on the dash until she told him to stop, then put them down and read her the reviews of a barbecue place forty minutes ahead.

"Three point nine stars," he said. "That's suspicious in a good way."

"That's not a thing."

"It's absolutely a thing. Five stars means the family's writing them."

The mountains showed up gray and folded in the windshield around ten thirty. Nadia took the exit without asking.


Maya was the one who noticed the long weekend on the calendar, three weeks out, and said they should go somewhere. Dev suggested the coast, then remembered the price of coastal hotels in October and suggested the mountains instead. They settled on a cabin two hours north, one bedroom, a wood stove, sixty-eight dollars a night because the listing photos were blurry and the reviews mentioned a smell.

"Might be mildew," Maya said, scrolling.

"It's two nights."

They booked it. Over the next week the trip came up in fragments — while brushing teeth, while waiting for pasta water. Dev wanted to leave Friday right after work; Maya pointed out that Friday traffic on the interstate would eat the whole savings in gas and sanity. They compromised on five-thirty a.m. Saturday, which Maya immediately regretted agreeing to.

Friday night they packed. Maya laid things on the bed in piles: socks, one book she wouldn't read, the good coffee and the small pour-over cone because she didn't trust cabins. Dev packed in four minutes, then spent forty on the cooler — sandwich stuff, eggs, a six-pack, the block of cheddar from the back of the fridge that he sniffed and declared fine.

"Did you get the propane thing for the lantern?" she asked.

"There's electricity. It said electricity."

"It said 'partial.'"

He went to the garage and came back with a flashlight and two headlamps, and she didn't argue.

They were on the road by six-ten, which felt like a victory. The sky was still gray-blue over the shopping centers. Maya drove because she liked driving first and Dev liked driving tired. She had a playlist ready; he asked for the podcast instead, and she said fine, after her first song.

Forty minutes in they stopped for gas and he bought two coffees and a bag of almonds, and she said, seriously, thank you.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which had been Dana's idea, and Marcus regretted agreeing to it immediately.

"We could leave at eight," he said into his pillow. "Traffic's fine at eight."

"Traffic is not fine at eight. Traffic is a parking lot at eight." Dana was already up, pulling on the jeans she'd left folded on the dresser the night before. "Also I want to get to the cabin before the grocery store closes. It's a small town, Marcus. Things close."

He got up. In the kitchen he made coffee in the travel mugs while she went through the cooler bag, and they had the same argument they'd had on Thursday about whether to bring the good knife.

"We're making sandwiches," he said.

"We're making sandwiches and I'm cooking Saturday. Those cabin knives are butter knives with delusions."

He wrapped the knife in a dish towel and put it in with the cutting board.

The car was mostly loaded from the night before. Dana went back inside twice — once for her charger, once because she couldn't remember locking the back door, which she had. Marcus sat in the passenger seat with the map open on his phone even though they both knew the way, and adjusted the vents.

They stopped for gas outside of town, and she bought two bad coffees anyway and a bag of pretzels because the drive was three hours and she liked something to do with her hands. He drove the first leg. Somewhere past the second exit she fell asleep with her head against the window, and he turned the radio down without changing the station, because she'd complained the last time he did that.

She woke up at the state line, said "Where are we," looked at the sign, and went back to sleep.


They left later than planned, which was expected. Nora had insisted on watering the plants first, and Dev couldn't find the phone charger that lived in the kitchen drawer until he remembered he'd taken it to work Tuesday.

"It's in your car," Nora said, standing in the doorway with her duffel bag over one shoulder.

He checked. It was in his car.

The drive to the coast took four hours, most of it on a highway lined with the same three chain restaurants repeating. They stopped in Bakersfield for gas and bad coffee. Nora bought a bag of pretzels and a peach that turned out to be hard as a stone.

"You can't buy fruit from a gas station," Dev said.

"I know that now."

She'd found the rental on a Tuesday night in bed, scrolling while he watched something on his laptop with headphones on. A small place, one bedroom, walking distance to the water, cheaper because it was October. They'd talked about it for maybe fifteen minutes and then booked it, which felt like a lot of momentum for two people who'd spent three weekends in a row not deciding what to do.

The house was fine. Smaller than the pictures suggested, with a smell of old carpet, but there was a deck and the ocean was audible from it.

"Do we unpack or go straight out?" Nora asked.

"Unpack. Then walk. Then dinner."

"You've thought about this."

"I thought about it in the car."

They put their clothes in the dresser because it seemed wasteful not to, then walked the four blocks to the beach as the light went orange. The sand was cold and mostly empty. Nora took her shoes off. Dev didn't.

"Two nights isn't very long," she said.

"It's enough."

They stood there for a while, not saying anything, and then went to find somewhere that served food.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine trying too hard. Dana adjusted the mirror while Marcus loaded the trunk, and she watched him in the reflection—the way he stacked the duffel bags, rearranged them, stacked them again.

"It fits," she called through the open window.

"It fits *better* now."

They'd argued Thursday night about whether to leave at six or eight. Six meant traffic on 95 was survivable. Eight meant sleep. They compromised on seven and both felt vaguely cheated.

Marcus slid into the passenger seat with two coffees balanced in one hand. "They didn't have oat milk. I got you almond."

"That's fine."

"You said last time almond tastes like a wet napkin."

"I said that about the almond milk at your mother's house." She took the cup anyway. "This is a different almond."

He plugged his phone into the aux cord, and the podcast he'd started on Tuesday picked up mid-sentence, some man explaining shipping containers. Dana let it run for four minutes before reaching over and switching to the radio.

"I was listening."

"You were nodding off."

"I was concentrating."

The cabin was in the Poconos, two and a half hours if nothing went wrong, three if the Delaware Water Gap did what it usually did. Dana's friend Reena owned it and had described it as "rustic," which Marcus had interpreted as a warning and Dana had interpreted as a style.

At the first rest stop, Marcus bought a bag of pretzels and a lottery ticket. Dana used the bathroom and came back to find him scratching the ticket against the dashboard with a penny.

"Anything?"

"Two dollars."

"So we're rich."

"We're two dollars richer." He folded the ticket into his shirt pocket and put his hand on her knee, and she pulled back onto the highway without saying anything about it.


The Friday afternoon light came in flat and yellow through the kitchen window while Maya packed the cooler. She wedged in four hard-boiled eggs, a bag of baby carrots, and the leftover chicken from Wednesday, then stood back and frowned at the empty space along one side.

"Do we want the seltzers?" she called.

Daniel was in the bedroom, holding two flannel shirts and trying to remember whether the cabin had a woodstove or just baseboard heat. "Bring them. But not the grapefruit ones, those are mine and I'm rationing."

"That's the pettiest thing you've ever said."

"I stand by it."

They'd booked the place three weeks ago, a one-bedroom outside Hocking Hills that a coworker of Daniel's had recommended, and they'd argued mildly about whether to leave Friday night or Saturday morning. Maya had won by pointing out that Saturday morning traffic on 33 was terrible and that they'd lose half a day. Daniel had conceded, mostly because he didn't actually care and enjoyed watching her build a case.

He carried the duffel out to the car at six-fifteen. It was colder than he'd expected. He came back in for a jacket and found Maya standing in front of the open fridge, holding the milk.

"It'll go bad," she said.

"It's two days."

"It expires Sunday."

"Then it'll be fine Sunday."

She put it back and shut the door harder than necessary. They locked up, checked the stove twice, and got on the road at six-forty, which was eleven minutes later than Maya had planned and forty minutes earlier than Daniel had privately expected.

At the gas station in Lancaster she bought a bag of pretzels and he filled the tank. Somewhere past Logan the streetlights ran out and the road turned dark and narrow, and Maya put her feet up on the dashboard, which he'd asked her not to do, and he let it go.


Dana found the coupon in a drawer while looking for scissors: two nights at a lodge in the Poconos, expiring the last day of October.

"It's probably a scam," Marcus said, not looking up from the sink.

"It came from the credit union. They send those out." She turned it over. "It says 'excluding holiday weekends.' Is Columbus Day a holiday weekend?"

"For some people."

They booked it anyway, for the second weekend in October, which turned out to be fine. Dana called on a Tuesday from her car in the parking garage at work, and the woman on the phone asked whether they wanted a king or two doubles, and Dana said king, and then wondered why that had felt like a small decision to explain later.

Friday they left at four-thirty, which was later than they'd planned by ninety minutes. Marcus had packed the night before, one duffel, his boots by the door. Dana packed at four fifteen, standing in front of the closet holding a sweater she'd owned for six years.

"You're going to bring the sweater," Marcus said from the hallway.

"I'm deciding."

"You're bringing it."

She brought it.

The traffic on 80 was bad until Stroudsburg and then it wasn't. Marcus drove the first hour and Dana read him the parts of the lodge's website that seemed exaggerated—a "world-class" continental breakfast, a fire pit described as "legendary." They stopped at a Wawa and split a hoagie in the car with the engine running and the heat on low.

"We could get dinner," Marcus said.

"This is dinner."

"This is a snack that we're calling dinner."

"It's a foot long."

He conceded the point. Outside, the light was going gold and then gray over the tree line, and Dana put her feet on the dash, and Marcus said something about her shoes, and she left them there anyway.


They left later than planned, which Dana had predicted out loud twice while Marcus was still looking for the good phone charger.

"Just buy one at a gas station," she said, standing by the door with her duffel.

"Twenty dollars for a cord I already own." He found it wedged behind the nightstand, held it up like evidence, and they were out.

The plan had come together on Tuesday over takeout. Two nights in a rented cabin ninety minutes north, chosen because it was cheap in October and had a photo of a woodstove. Dana handled the booking. Marcus said he'd handle food, which meant a grocery run Friday afternoon where he stood in the pasta aisle texting her pictures of two sauces until she called and said either one, genuinely either one.

In the car, Dana drove because Marcus's neck had been bothering him. He controlled the music and the heat, adjusting both more than necessary. Around Danbury they argued mildly about whether to stop for coffee — she said they'd be there in forty minutes, he said forty minutes was a long time to be awake and sad — and they stopped. He got a black coffee and, unprompted, a chocolate croissant they split at a red light, flaking crumbs onto the console.

The cabin was smaller than the pictures and colder. The woodstove worked, though it took Marcus three attempts and a page of newspaper from a stack someone had left in 2019. Dana unpacked, found the extra blankets, and discovered the shower had good pressure, which she announced through the wall like important news.

They ate the pasta at eight-thirty, sitting on the floor because the table wobbled. Marcus said they should do this more often. Dana said they said that every time, and he agreed that they did, and then neither of them got up for a while.


They left later than planned, which was normal.

Dana had wanted to be on the road by seven to beat the Friday traffic out of Sacramento, but Marcus discovered at 7:15 that the cooler was still in the garage rafters, buried behind a box of his old textbooks he kept meaning to donate. By the time he wrestled it down and rinsed out the film of dust, Dana had already repacked her bag twice.

"Do I need the rain jacket?" she called from the bedroom.

"It's supposed to be seventy in Mendocino."

"That's not an answer."

He came to the doorway. "Bring it. You'll be cold at night."

She brought it.

The apartment had that particular stillness of a place about to be empty. Marcus went around unplugging things—toaster, the space heater they never used, the lamp with the frayed cord that Dana insisted was fine. She watered the pothos on the windowsill and left the bathroom light on, which she did every trip, because she'd read once that it deterred break-ins and it had become superstition.

At the Safeway on Franklin they argued mildly about snacks. Marcus wanted the trail mix with the M&M's; Dana pointed out that he always picked out the M&M's and left the rest, which meant she was buying peanuts for no one. They got two bags. She added a sourdough loaf and a wedge of cheddar. He added beef jerky she'd never eat.

The car smelled like the vanilla air freshener his sister had given them as a joke. Dana claimed the aux cord before he'd finished adjusting the mirrors.

"Three hours," she said.

"Three and a half with the coast road."

"Take the coast road."

He merged onto the freeway. She put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed.


They left later than they meant to, which surprised neither of them.

Dana had the cooler packed by nine—turkey sandwiches, two peaches, a bag of pretzels she'd bought specifically because Marcus always complained there was nothing salty. But then Marcus couldn't find the tent stakes, and it turned out they were in the hall closet behind the vacuum, in a plastic grocery bag, where he had put them himself in October.

"Found them," he called.

"Where were they?"

"Doesn't matter."

They got on the road at 10:40. The plan was two nights at a state park about three hours north, a place Dana's coworker had recommended. Site 41, walk-in, no electric hookup. Marcus had wanted a site with hookups. Dana had pointed out they didn't own anything that needed plugging in.

Somewhere around the second hour, they stopped at a gas station with a good bathroom and a bad selection of coffee. Marcus bought a coffee anyway and drank half of it. Dana bought a lottery ticket, which she did maybe twice a year, always on trips.

"What would you do," Marcus said, pulling back onto the highway.

"Pay off the car. Then I don't know. Probably nothing different."

"That's a terrible answer."

"You asked."

They argued mildly about whether to take the scenic route, which added twenty minutes. Marcus wanted to; Dana was thinking about setting up the tent before dark, and it was already after one, and they still had to stop for firewood because you couldn't bring your own across county lines.

They took the scenic route. It was, in fact, scenic—long stretches of farmland going gold, a covered bridge Marcus slowed down for so Dana could take a picture through the windshield that came out mostly reflection.

At the park entrance, the ranger handed them a map and circled their site in ballpoint.

"Nice spot," she said. "Watch for the raccoons."


They left Thursday night instead of Friday morning, which had been Marisol's idea and which Danny had resisted for exactly as long as it took him to check the traffic app.

"Ninety minutes to Hartford if we go now," she said, standing in the kitchen with her laptop open on the counter beside a bowl of grapes. "Three hours if we wait."

He was already pulling the duffel from the closet. "Do we need the cooler?"

"For two nights?"

"For the drive. I don't want to stop at a Sunoco and pay four dollars for a Gatorade."

She let him win that one, mostly because she wanted the leftover pasta salad to get eaten by somebody. While he packed the cooler she made a list on the back of an envelope — phone chargers, the good sunscreen, her book, his allergy pills — and then lost the envelope and made a second one.

The cabin was her cousin's, offered casually at a birthday party in March and finally taken up in September. Danny had asked twice whether they should bring a gift. Marisol said a bottle of wine, and then they spent eleven minutes in the liquor store deciding between two bottles that cost within a dollar of each other.

On the highway he drove and she managed the music, skipping anything too slow. Around Danbury they got hungry and argued mildly about whether to stop, which resolved when she saw a sign for a diner she'd been to as a kid.

"It's probably terrible now," she said.

"We're going," he said, and took the exit.

The pancakes were fine. The coffee was bad. They sat in a booth with cracked vinyl and split an order of home fries, and she told him a story about her cousin he'd already heard, and he let her tell it anyway.


They left later than planned, which surprised neither of them.

Dana had wanted to be on the road by seven. She'd said so Thursday night, standing at the kitchen counter with a legal pad, writing out a list that included *snacks* and *check tire pressure* and, inexplicably, *sunglasses?* Marcus had agreed to seven the way he agreed to most schedules, sincerely and without much conviction.

By eight-fifteen Saturday morning he was still looking for the phone charger that lived in the car, which turned out to be in the car.

"Found it," he called from the driveway.

"Great." Dana was locking the back door, then unlocking it because she couldn't remember whether she'd turned off the coffee maker. She had. She locked it again.

The plan was two nights in a rented cabin ninety minutes north, near a lake neither of them had seen. Dana's coworker had recommended it. There was a photo online of a screened porch with two Adirondack chairs, and Dana had looked at that photo probably a dozen times.

They stopped for gas at the Shell on Route 9 and argued mildly about whether to also stop for real breakfast or just get gas station coffee and something wrapped in plastic. Marcus wanted the diner. Dana pointed out that the diner would put them another forty minutes behind.

"Behind what?" Marcus said. "There's no schedule. That's the whole point."

She considered this. It was, annoyingly, true.

They went to the diner. Marcus ordered eggs over medium and Dana got the pancakes she always regretted, and they talked about whether they should have brought a cooler, and whether the cabin would have decent Wi-Fi, and whether they cared.

Back in the car, Dana put her feet on the dash. Marcus pulled onto the highway. The exit sign said forty-one miles.


Marisol found the cooler in the back of the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging.

"It smells like a lake," she said, carrying it into the kitchen at arm's length.

Dev looked up from his phone. "That's because it's been in a lake. Two summers ago, remember? Your cousin's place."

"You said you'd wash it."

"I said I'd get to it." He took it from her and ran it under the tap, scrubbing with a sponge that was probably too nice for the job. "Two nights, right? So what, three ice packs?"

"Two. We're stopping for lunch anyway."

They'd decided on Thursday, after a week where they'd both been snapping at each other over nothing—the dishwasher loaded wrong, a text left unanswered. Not a real fight, just friction. Dev's coworker had a cabin near Hocking Hills that sat empty most weekends, and the offer had come at the right time.

Marisol packed while Dev checked the tire pressure. She put in the good hiking socks, then took out the sundress she'd optimistically added. It would be forty-eight degrees. She left the paperback she was halfway through, knowing she wouldn't read it, then put it back in anyway.

"Do we need to stop the mail?"

"For two days?"

"Fine."

They left at nine-fifteen, an hour later than planned, because Dev couldn't find his sunglasses and then found them in the car. Marisol drove the first leg. Somewhere past Columbus they got off at an exit for gas and ended up eating gas station taquitos in the parking lot, which Dev declared better than they had any right to be.

"We should have brought the good coffee," Marisol said, back on the highway.

"There's a Kroger in Logan."

"Okay." She reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he covered it with his own, and neither of them said anything for a while.


The rental car smelled faintly of pine air freshener and someone else's cigarettes. Dana pushed the passenger seat back and pulled her knees up while Marcus loaded the last bag into the trunk.

"Did you grab the phone charger?" she asked through the open window.

"The long one or the short one?"

"Either. Both."

He patted his jacket pocket, frowned, and jogged back into the apartment. Dana watched a neighbor drag a recycling bin to the curb. It was seven forty on a Friday morning and the light was still gray and low, the kind that made everything look like a photograph from 1997.

Marcus came back with two cables and a bag of pretzels. "Found these in the drawer. Probably stale."

"Probably fine."

They'd been going back and forth about the trip for three weeks. Dana wanted the coast; Marcus had found a cabin two hours inland for eighty dollars a night, which won the argument by attrition. It had a wood stove and no cell service, according to the listing, though the reviews suggested both claims were exaggerated.

Merging onto the highway, Marcus asked if she wanted coffee.

"There's a place at exit nine. The one with the goat on the sign."

"That's a llama."

"It's a goat, Marcus."

They stopped anyway. Dana got out to use the bathroom and came back with two coffees and a breakfast sandwich cut in half, which she balanced on the console between them. Marcus ate his half in three bites while driving with his knee, and Dana said something about that, and he said something back, and neither of them meant it.

By nine the towns had thinned out. Fields, a hardware store, a church with a hand-lettered sign. Dana put her feet on the dashboard and Marcus glanced over.

"Sorry."

"I didn't say anything."

She left them there. The road curved north, and the pretzels turned out to be fine.


The Friday afternoon light came in sideways through the kitchen window while Dana packed the cooler. She'd bought too much: three kinds of cheese, a sleeve of crackers, grapes that would probably get crushed.

"Do we need the tent?" Marcus called from the hallway.

"We're staying in a cabin."

"Right." He came in holding two flashlights anyway, and set them on the counter beside the cooler. "In case the power goes out."

They'd been talking about the trip since March—two nights in the Blue Ridge, a place Marcus's coworker had recommended. It had taken until October to actually book it, and even then Dana had spent an hour comparing cancellation policies before clicking through.

"Traffic's going to be bad if we don't leave by five," she said.

"It's four-forty."

"That's why I'm saying it."

He went to get the bags. Dana wiped down the counter, checked the stove twice, and texted their neighbor about the mail. In the car, Marcus adjusted the mirrors even though nobody else had driven it, and Dana pulled up the directions, then a playlist, then the weather.

"Forty percent Saturday," she said.

"That's basically nothing."

"That's basically half."

They stopped for gas outside the city, and Marcus went in for coffee. He came back with two cups and a bag of sour gummy worms, which he handed to her without comment. She opened them.

The interstate thinned out past the exurbs. Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down when Marcus glanced over. He didn't say anything about it, and she didn't either.

Around seven the hills started, dark shapes against a darker sky. Dana turned the music down a little.

"We forgot a corkscrew," she said.

Marcus thought about it. "We'll figure it out."

She nodded and let her head rest against the window.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine and something chemical underneath. Dana adjusted the passenger seat back two clicks and dropped her tote in the footwell.

"Did you bring the phone charger?" she asked.

"The good one or the one that only works if you hold it at an angle?"

"Whichever one you brought."

Marcus patted his jacket pocket, then the console. "The angle one."

They'd argued mildly about leaving Friday night versus Saturday morning. Marcus had wanted to beat traffic; Dana had wanted to finish her laundry. They compromised on seven a.m. Saturday, which meant Marcus was up at five-thirty making coffee too loudly and Dana lay in bed listening to him try to be quiet.

The plan was two nights in a cabin outside Asheville. Dana had found it on a listing site in October and they'd talked about it enough times that booking it felt less like a decision and more like an inevitability. It had a woodstove they probably wouldn't figure out.

"Gas station or wait?" Marcus asked at the corner.

"Wait. There's the cheaper one by the highway."

They waited. The cheaper one was four cents less per gallon and Dana bought a bag of pretzels and two waters while Marcus pumped. When she came back out he was leaning against the car, looking at his phone.

"My mother wants to know if we're coming for Easter."

"That's in April."

"I know. I'm not answering yet."

They merged onto I-40 at 7:22. Dana put on a podcast neither of them had strong feelings about. Around Hickory, Marcus started drifting into the rumble strip and Dana said his name and he said he was fine, and then twenty minutes later he pulled off and let her drive.

She adjusted the mirrors. He fell asleep against the window within ten miles, mouth slightly open, and she left the podcast on anyway.


They left later than planned, which Dana had predicted in the driveway three days earlier, when Marcus insisted they could be on the road by seven.

"It's eight-forty," she said, buckling in.

"Traffic's better now anyway." He'd said this before and she'd stopped arguing with it. The cooler sat between her feet because the trunk was full of a tent they might not use, depending on whether the cabin's woodstove worked, which the listing had described as "rustic-functional."

The plan had come together over two weeks of half-conversations. Dana had found the place on a Tuesday and sent the link while Marcus was at work; he'd texted back a thumbs-up, which annoyed her, and then called during his lunch break to say he'd looked at it properly and it was good, but did she know it was ninety minutes from the nearest grocery store?

They'd shopped Thursday night at the Kroger on Belmont, arguing pleasantly about how much coffee two people drink in two days. Marcus wanted to bring the good burr grinder. Dana pointed out it needed an outlet.

"There's electricity."

"There's 'limited electricity.'"

He brought it anyway, wrapped in a towel.

Now, past the county line, the road opened up and Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down when Marcus glanced over.

"You could just say something," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You looked."

They stopped at a gas station in Millbrook because Marcus wanted jerky and Dana needed the bathroom. She bought a bag of pretzels and a postcard she had no intention of mailing. In the car, she read him the sign about the fishing derby.

"Do we fish?"

"We do not fish," she said.

He merged back onto the highway. The cooler shifted against her ankle. Forty miles left, maybe fifty, and neither of them had checked whether the cabin had sheets.


Maya was the one who suggested Asheville, mostly because it was four hours away instead of seven. She said this at the kitchen table on Wednesday night, laptop open, while Devon ate cereal standing up because he'd forgotten to eat dinner again.

"Four hours if we leave before six," he said. "Otherwise it's five."

"So we leave at six."

"You've never left anywhere at six."

She threw a dish towel at him, which he caught without looking up from his phone, where he was already checking whether the cat sitter was free. She was. That settled the biggest question. The rest was smaller: whether to book the place with the good reviews and the shared bathroom, or the one with the private bathroom and the mildew complaint. They chose the mildew. Devon said mildew was subjective.

Friday morning they left at 6:40, which Maya considered a moral victory and Devon considered proof of his point. He drove first because she wasn't awake enough to be trusted with the interstate. She held both coffees while he merged, then set his in the cupholder and kept hers in her lap.

Somewhere past the state line they had a small disagreement about the playlist. She wanted the podcast. He wanted anything with a beat, because podcasts made him sleepy at the wheel. They compromised: music until the mountains, podcast after. It turned out the mountains came sooner than either of them expected, and by then he'd stopped caring, so they listened to the album straight through.

They stopped at a gas station in Marion for bathrooms and beef jerky. Maya bought a lottery ticket, which she did once a year for no reason she could explain. Devon checked the tire pressure on the passenger side because it had looked low in the driveway. It was fine.

"Two more hours," he said, getting back in.

"Ninety minutes," she said. "If you let me drive."

He handed her the keys.


The night before, Dana spread the road atlas across the kitchen table even though Marcus had already pulled up directions on his phone.

"Three hours and forty minutes," he said.

"That's if we don't stop." She traced the highway with her finger. "I want to stop at that fruit stand near the exit for Willow Creek. The one with the pie."

"It's October. They might be closed."

"Then we'll find out."

They packed separately, which was how it always went. Marcus rolled two shirts and a pair of jeans into a duffel and was done in six minutes. Dana filled a canvas bag with three sweaters, two books she wouldn't read, and the good pillow from her side of the bed.

"The cabin has pillows," he said.

"Not this one."

In the morning she woke first and made coffee in the travel mugs, the ones that leaked slightly if you overfilled them, so she didn't. Marcus came out in a flannel shirt with his hair still flattened on one side and asked whether she'd turned the thermostat down. She had. He checked anyway, then apologized for checking, and she said she'd have checked too.

The car smelled like the pine air freshener they'd been meaning to replace. Marcus drove first. Dana handled the radio until the stations gave out past the county line, then plugged in her phone and played the album they both liked, the one from the summer they moved in together.

Around ten-thirty they passed the exit for Willow Creek.

"Do you want to?" he asked.

She looked at the clock, then at the flat gray fields going by. "Next time. Let's just get there."

He nodded and stayed in the left lane. Twenty minutes later she said she was already regretting it, and he said he knew she would, and he took the next exit to find somewhere with pie.


The car smelled like the pine air freshener Priya had bought at the last gas station, the one Daniel said reminded him of a dentist's office.

"You packed the good pillow?" he asked, backing out of the driveway.

"I packed both good pillows. You can have the flat one." She was scrolling on her phone, thumb flicking. "Okay, so the cabin says check-in is after four, but the guy texted that we can come earlier if the cleaners are done."

"Text him."

"I did. He hasn't answered." She set the phone in the cupholder, screen down, then picked it up again. "There's a farm stand off exit 19. Cider donuts."

"We're not stopping forty minutes in."

"I'm just saying it exists."

They stopped at exit 19.

Daniel stood in the gravel lot eating a donut over a paper napkin while Priya examined a table of squash she had no intention of buying. A woman with a cash box told her the butternuts were good roasted. Priya agreed that they were and bought two, because it seemed rude not to, and then had to explain to Daniel that yes, she knew they had no oven access, and yes, she would carry them the whole weekend.

"They're heavy," he said, taking the bag anyway.

Back on the highway, she read him the reviews out loud, skipping the ones about the raccoon. He drove with one hand and complained about a truck. She fell asleep somewhere near the reservoir with her mouth open, and he turned the music down instead of off, which he thought was a fairly considerate thing to do.

The cabin was smaller than the pictures. There was a woodstove neither of them knew how to use, and a lake through the trees, gray and flat in the late light.

"Bags first," Priya said, "then we figure out the fire."

"Then dinner."

"Then dinner," she agreed, and propped the door open with a squash.


The rental car smelled like someone else's air freshener, pine and something chemical. Nora rolled down her window three inches while Dev backed out of the driveway, one hand on the wheel, the other adjusting the mirror he had already adjusted twice.

"Did you bring the phone charger, or did I?" he asked.

"You said you'd grab it."

"I said I'd grab the good one. Did you grab the other one?"

She dug through her tote and produced a frayed white cable. "This one."

"That one takes six hours."

"Then we'll charge slowly."

They stopped at the gas station on Route 9 because Dev didn't trust the rental's fuel gauge, which read three-quarters full. Nora went inside and came back with black coffee for him, an iced tea for herself, and a bag of those pretzels shaped like little sticks. She'd been eating them constantly since March, and neither of them knew why.

The plan was two nights in a cabin outside Cooperstown, chosen because it was three hours away and had a wood stove in the photos. Nora had booked it in a burst of enthusiasm six weeks ago. Now, sitting in traffic near Albany, she wondered aloud whether they should have just gone to her sister's lake house for free.

"Your sister would have talked at us for forty-eight hours," Dev said.

"That's true."

"And there's no wood stove."

"There's a grill."

"It's a good grill," he admitted.

They argued mildly about the podcast versus music, settled on music, and then didn't talk for twenty minutes, which was comfortable. Dev drove with the seat too far back, the way he always did. Nora put her bare feet on the dash and he said nothing about it, which she noticed and appreciated.

At a rest stop outside Amsterdam she texted the cabin owner about the key code. He wrote back immediately: *under the flowerpot.* She read it out loud, and Dev laughed, and they got back in the car.


The Friday traffic on I-40 hadn't started yet, which was the whole point of leaving at two.

"You packed the good pillow?" Marcus asked, checking the backseat.

"Both of them. And the phone chargers, and the thing for the car." Priya was folding the printed reservation confirmation into her bag, because Marcus's phone always died at the worst moment and she'd learned not to argue about it, just to bring paper.

They'd chosen Asheville because it was three hours away and neither of them had to think hard about it. Priya had wanted the coast, but the cabin rental she found near Weaverville was a hundred and ten a night, and Marcus's hours had been cut in September.

"There's a taco place on the way," he said. "In Old Fort. My cousin mentioned it."

"Your cousin thinks Applebee's is a destination."

"He has range."

They stopped anyway. It was fine — the salsa was too sweet and the tortillas were good, and they ate in the car with the doors open because the picnic tables were wet. Priya wiped her hands on a napkin and looked at the mountains, which had gone that flat blue they get in the late afternoon.

The cabin key was in a lockbox, and the code didn't work the first two times because Marcus was reading a 6 as an 8. Inside it smelled like cedar and, faintly, like someone else's dog. There was a hot tub on the deck that the listing had described as "seasonal," which turned out to mean unheated and full of leaves.

"We could still get in," Marcus said.

"You get in. I'll take a picture for your mother."

He didn't get in. They put the groceries away, argued briefly about whether to hike in the morning or sleep in, and settled it the way they usually did — by not deciding, and going to bed early.


The Friday traffic on I-90 was worse than Dana had predicted, so they didn't reach the Berkshires until almost eight. Marcus drove the last stretch with the windows down, one hand on the wheel, while Dana read the check-in instructions off her phone for the third time.

"Lockbox on the porch railing," she said. "Code is 4-4-2-1. She says the hot water takes a minute."

They'd argued mildly about the rental. Marcus had wanted the cheaper place closer to town; Dana held out for the cabin with the woodstove, mostly because of the photos. Now, standing in the gravel drive with their duffel bags, she felt vindicated and said nothing about it.

Inside, the cabin smelled like cedar and faintly like mothballs. Marcus opened the refrigerator, found it empty except for a jar of pickles, and closed it.

"So we're doing the store tonight or the diner tonight?"

"Diner," Dana said. "Store tomorrow, so we don't buy things we don't need."

"We always buy things we don't need."

"Tomorrow, then, when we're rested and disciplined."

They found a place off Route 7 with a hand-lettered sign and vinyl booths. Marcus ordered the meatloaf; Dana got a grilled cheese and stole half his mashed potatoes, which was a thing she did and which he had stopped commenting on around year two. They talked about her sister's new apartment, about whether the Sunday hike was too ambitious, about a coworker of Marcus's who kept scheduling meetings at four-thirty on Fridays.

Back at the cabin, Marcus got the woodstove going on the second try. Dana sat on the braided rug with her socks off and made a list on the back of a gas receipt: coffee, eggs, bread, whatever fruit looked decent.

"Beer," Marcus said, from the couch.

"Obviously beer." She wrote it down, underlined it, and put the pen in her pocket for morning.


The rental car smelled like pine air freshener and someone else's cigarettes. Dana rolled down the window while Marcus loaded the cooler into the trunk.

"Did you get ice?" she called.

"Two bags. One's already sweating through the paper."

They'd been planning the trip for three weeks, mostly in the form of texts sent from their separate desks — a link to a cabin, a photo of a trailhead, a question about whether Saturday or Sunday was better for the drive home. The cabin had been Dana's idea. Marcus had wanted the coast, but the coast in October meant fog and forty-dollar parking, and he'd conceded without much argument.

He got in and adjusted the mirror. "Okay. Route."

"There's the highway or there's the road through Millersburg."

"Which one has the sandwich place?"

"Millersburg. But it adds forty minutes."

He thought about it. "Highway. We can eat gas station food like adults."

Dana laughed and put her feet on the dash, then took them down when he glanced at her. They'd had that argument already, months ago, and neither of them wanted it again.

Twenty minutes outside the city, she realized she'd forgotten her hiking boots.

"They're by the door," she said. "I looked right at them."

Marcus didn't say anything for a second, which was worse than saying something. Then: "You have sneakers?"

"In the bag. The white ones."

"Trail's gravel mostly. You'll be fine." He put on the turn signal for no reason, then turned it off. "Do you want to go back?"

"It's twenty minutes each way."

"So no."

"So no."

She found a station playing seventies rock and left it there because he liked it. He noticed and didn't mention it. Outside, the subdivisions gave way to soybean fields, then to a stretch of billboards advertising fireworks and a place called Hillbilly Junction.

"We're stopping there," Dana said.

"Absolutely not."

They stopped there.


Maya had the map open on the kitchen table, actual paper, because the reception on the Blue Ridge Parkway was unreliable and she liked seeing the whole route at once. Dev leaned over her shoulder with his coffee.

"Two hours to the cabin, or three if we stop in Charlottesville," he said.

"Stop in Charlottesville. I want a sandwich that isn't gas station."

They packed on Friday after work, which meant they packed badly. Dev put in four shirts for two days. Maya brought a book she wouldn't read and forgot her toothbrush, discovering this at ten p.m. when she was already in pajamas.

"CVS closes at eleven," Dev said, not looking up from his phone.

"I'll use yours."

"You will not use mine."

She used the travel one from the bathroom drawer, unopened since a dentist visit in 2022, and declared it fine.

Saturday morning they got out later than planned, 9:40 instead of eight. Dev drove first. Maya controlled the music and the snacks, which she took seriously, unwrapping a granola bar and holding it out to him at intervals without being asked. Somewhere past Manassas they argued mildly about whether his sister's boyfriend was rude or just quiet. They didn't resolve it.

In Charlottesville they parked in a garage and walked to the pedestrian mall. The sandwich place had a twenty-minute wait, so they got tacos instead and sat on a low brick wall while a man played guitar poorly nearby. Maya got salsa on her jeans. Dev handed her a napkin without comment.

"We should do this more," she said.

"You say that every time."

"And I mean it every time."

He believed her. They walked back to the car the long way, past a bookstore they didn't go into, and got on the road again around one, the mountains going blue and vague ahead of them.


They left Thursday night instead of Friday morning, which had been Priya's idea and which Danny had resisted for two days before admitting she was right about the traffic.

The packing took longer than either expected. Danny stood in the closet doorway holding two flannel shirts, asking which one, and Priya said it was forty degrees in the mountains and he should bring both, plus the fleece that was in the dryer. She was rolling clothes into her duffel the way her mother had taught her, tight cylinders that never wrinkled. Danny folded his in quarters and stuffed them down.

"Did you cancel the grocery delivery?"

"Sunday's is fine. We'll be back by two."

They fought briefly about the cooler—whether to bring one at all, since the cabin had a fridge—and settled on packing the small one with beer and the leftover pasta salad, because Priya didn't want to stop for dinner. Danny took the trash out. Priya watered the pothos and moved it away from the window, then texted their neighbor about the mail.

The car smelled faintly of the dog, who wasn't coming; Priya's sister had picked him up at six. Danny drove first. Priya read directions off her phone even though the GPS was talking, because she liked to know the shape of the route in advance, the towns they'd pass through.

Around Bethel they stopped for gas and she bought a coffee and a bag of those cinnamon pretzels she only ever ate in cars. Danny wanted to make it to the cabin before eleven. He didn't quite. At 11:20 they pulled onto gravel and sat for a second in the dark with the engine off, the headlights still fading on the porch steps.

"Bags now or bags in the morning?" he said.

"Now," she said. "But just the bags. The cooler can wait."


The Tacoma's tailgate was still sticky from last summer's cooler, and Marisol scrubbed at it with a paper towel while Dev carried out the sleeping bags.

"Two nights or one?" he asked.

"One. I have to be back for my mom's thing on Sunday." She wadded the towel and tossed it toward the trash bin, missing. "Which means we should leave by four or we'll hit all of Friday traffic on 26."

Dev checked his watch. Three-fifteen. He went back inside for the cooler and found her list on the counter, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company: coffee, eggs, that bread, matches, IBUPROFEN in capital letters.

"Do we have matches?"

"There's a lighter in the junk drawer. Bring both."

They argued mildly in the grocery store about whether to buy hot dogs, which Marisol considered a waste of a camping meal and Dev considered the entire point. They compromised on hot dogs and a package of chicken thighs neither of them was confident about cooking over a fire. At the register she remembered they'd forgotten the bread and went back for it while he loaded bags into the cart, and the checker asked if they were headed somewhere fun, and Dev said the coast, and the checker said oh, it's supposed to rain.

It did rain, starting around Hillsboro. Marisol drove with both hands on the wheel and the wipers on intermittent, and Dev fell asleep against the window for twenty minutes and woke embarrassed, wiping his mouth.

"You snored," she said.

"I don't snore."

"You made a sound."

The campground office was closed when they arrived, so they took site eleven, which had a picnic table with a warped bench, and stood in the drizzle looking at it. Dev said it wasn't bad. Marisol said it wasn't, and started pulling the tent bag out from under the sleeping bags.


The rental car smelled like pine air freshener and someone else's cigarettes. Dana adjusted the mirror while Marcus loaded the trunk, wedging the cooler behind her canvas bag.

"Did you grab the phone charger?" she asked.

He patted his jacket pocket, then his jeans. "It's on the nightstand."

"I'll get it." She left the driver's door open and went back up the two flights to their apartment, where the blinds were still drawn against the June heat. The charger was where he'd said, coiled next to a glass of water he'd forgotten to bring to the sink. She took the glass too.

By the time they merged onto the interstate it was almost nine, which meant they'd hit traffic outside Hartford. Marcus had wanted to leave at seven. He didn't say anything about it, which she noticed and appreciated, and then he said, "We could've left at seven," and she laughed.

"You held it in for eleven minutes."

"Twelve."

The plan was two nights at a cabin his coworker had recommended, near a lake with a name neither of them could pronounce confidently. Ninety dollars a night, no cell service, a wood stove they wouldn't need in June. Dana had made a list on the back of an envelope: eggs, coffee, bug spray, cards, the good pillow. They'd argued mildly about the good pillow. It took up a third of the trunk.

At the rest stop in Sturbridge she bought two coffees and a bag of pretzels while he stood by the maps he never used, tracing the route with one finger. When she handed him his cup he said, "Did you get the—"

"Two sugars. Yes."

They stood a minute in the parking lot, drinking, watching a family unload three children and a dog. Then Marcus said, "Okay," and Dana said, "Okay," and they got back in the car.