The Twenty-Fifth

Diane got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning—*Don't stop at the store, I mean it*—and saw that Ray had ignored it. Two bags sat by the sink. She peered in: red potatoes, a lemon, a bottle of the Chianti they'd had in Rome in 2011, when the euro was cheap and they'd split one entrée between them.

He came through the back door at six-fifteen, snow on his shoulders.

"You went to Marconi's," she said.

"I went to Marconi's."

"We agreed. Nothing fancy."

"Potatoes aren't fancy." He set his keys in the dish. "You made the reservation cancellation call?"

"I did. Kevin sounded personally wounded."

Ray laughed. He hung his coat on the chair instead of the hook, the way he had for twenty-five years, and she let it go, the way she had for twenty-five years.

They cooked without much talking. She trimmed the green beans; he took the chicken out and salted it more than she would have, and she watched him do it and said nothing about that either. The radio was on low, a station out of Grand Rapids playing standards.

"Do you remember what the reception hall smelled like?" she asked.

"Carpet cleaner."

"Carpet cleaner. And your uncle Danny smoking in the coatroom."

"He thought nobody knew."

"Everybody knew."

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room. Halfway through, Ray got up, refilled her glass without asking, and sat back down. Diane put her hand over his wrist for a moment before picking up her fork again.

Later, they did the dishes together, her washing, him drying, and the snow kept coming down outside the window over the sink.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter where she'd left the sticky note that morning: *20 years. Don't screw it up.*

She'd bought the halibut on her lunch break, and the good butter, and a bottle of the Oregon pinot they'd discovered on a trip in 2011 when the rental car broke down outside Dundee. She was searing the fish when Marcus came through the garage door with a paper bag under one arm.

"You're cooking," he said.

"You sound disappointed."

"I'm devastated. I picked up dinner." He set the bag down—Thai, from the place on Fremont—and started laughing. "Okay. We have two dinners."

"We'll eat both."

"We'll eat both," he agreed, and kissed her shoulder on his way to the cupboard for plates.

They ate at the dining table instead of in front of the TV, which felt slightly formal, like being guests in their own house. The pad see ew went in the fridge for tomorrow. Marcus poured the wine and admitted he'd forgotten to get a card.

"I didn't get you one either," Dana said. "I got you this." She slid a small flat box across the table: a replacement for the watch he'd lost in a hotel in Cleveland eleven years ago and complained about ever since.

He turned it over twice without saying anything, then cleared his throat. "That's not fair. I got you a card and then didn't get you the card."

"You got me Thai food."

"I got me Thai food. You just happened to be here."

Later they took the wine out to the back steps. The neighbor's motion light kept clicking on and off. Dana leaned into him, and neither of them said anything for a while, and it was enough.


The Twentieth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, trying to remember what Michael had said about the salmon. Thawing in the fridge. Right.

By the time he came through the door at six-fifteen, she had the oven preheating and two glasses out.

"You beat me," he said, setting down his bag. "That's cheating."

"Reynolds canceled. I drove home in daylight. It was disorienting."

He kissed her cheek, then went to the fridge, pulling out the fish, a lemon, a bundle of asparagus going slightly limp at the tips. "These are questionable."

"They're fine. Trim them."

"I'm trimming them. I'm just noting the questionability."

Twenty years ago they had been married in her aunt's backyard in Rochester with sixty folding chairs and a thunderstorm that held off until the cake. Dana's dress had grass stains on the hem by four o'clock. Michael's brother gave a toast that went on for eleven minutes and included a story about a canoe that nobody understood.

Now they moved around each other in the kitchen with the easy choreography of long practice, Dana reaching past him for the olive oil, Michael stepping back without looking.

"Julia called," he said. "She wanted to know if we were doing anything fancy."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said we were staying in. She sounded disappointed on our behalf."

"She's twenty-two." Dana slid the pan into the oven. "She'll understand eventually."

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, with the good wine and the bad plates. Afterward Michael washed and Dana dried, and they argued mildly about whether the toast at the wedding had been eleven minutes or closer to fifteen.

"Eleven," Dana said. "I timed it."

"You did not."

"I did. I was bored and you were crying."

"I was moved."

She hung the towel on the oven handle. "Twenty years," she said. "Do you want dessert?"

"There's dessert?"

"There's ice cream."

"Then yes."


Marguerite found the recipe card in the back of the drawer, her mother's handwriting faded to the color of weak tea. Chicken paprikash. She'd made it the first night David came to dinner, twenty-five years ago, in the apartment on Sheridan Road with the radiator that clanked like someone was trapped inside it.

"You're doing the thing," David said from the doorway. He had a grocery bag in each arm and rain on his shoulders.

"What thing."

"The thing where you stand still and stare into the middle distance and then tell me you weren't thinking about anything."

"I wasn't thinking about anything." She took a bag from him. "Did you get sour cream? Full fat, not the—"

"Full fat. And the paprika from the Hungarian place on Fifty-Seventh, which cost eleven dollars, which I want noted."

"Noted."

He put on the record they always put on, the Bill Evans, and she started the onions, and for a while neither of them said anything because they didn't have to. He set the table with the good plates, four of them out of habit before he remembered and put two back. The girls were in Denver and Chapel Hill now.

"Your father hated me," he said, slicing bread.

"My father thought you were a communist."

"I was a communist."

"You were a graduate student."

At the table she raised her glass and couldn't think what to say, which surprised her, twenty-five years of talking and nothing ready. David waited. He was good at waiting. It was possibly his best quality.

"To the radiator," she said finally.

He laughed, that surprised bark she still liked. "To the radiator."

The paprikash wasn't as good as her mother's. They ate it anyway, slowly, and left the dishes until morning.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, and then took the coat off and started pulling things out of the refrigerator.

By the time Marcus came in at six-forty, she had the shallots minced and the butter softening and a pot of water refusing to boil.

"You beat me," he said.

"Reyes covered my last two hours. I told him it was our anniversary and he made a face like I'd said something in Latin."

Marcus set down a paper bag on the counter and took out a bottle of wine and a small white box. "I stopped at Ferrante's. They only had the almond kind left."

"That's the one I like."

"I know. I said 'only' because I wanted credit for the effort."

She laughed and handed him the corkscrew. He worked it in while she got the pasta going, the two of them moving around each other in the narrow galley the way they had for eleven of the fifteen years — since the house, since the second bedroom that had been an office and then a nursery and then an office again.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television. Marcus lit the candles they'd been saving since Christmas.

"Fifteen," he said. "You know what the traditional gift is?"

"Crystal."

"You looked it up too."

"I looked it up at two in the afternoon at my desk," she admitted, "and then I decided we should just eat well."

He raised his glass. She touched hers to it. Outside, a car door slammed and a neighbor's dog started up, and neither of them turned to look.

Later they split the almond cake with two forks, standing at the counter, still talking.


The invitation had been Deb's idea, though calling it an invitation was generous. She'd left a sticky note on the coffee maker: *Friday. Us. No phones.*

Marcus found it at six in the morning, still half-asleep, and laughed out loud in the empty kitchen. Twenty-five years. He'd been dreading the pressure of it, the sense that a quarter century demanded something enormous—a trip to Portugal, a party with rented chairs. The sticky note let all the air out of that.

By Friday evening he'd already made the sauce, the one with too much garlic that Deb pretended to complain about. She came in at five-thirty carrying a paper bag from the wine store and a bakery box she set down with theatrical care.

"You went to Fiorella's."

"I went to Fiorella's."

"That's forty minutes out of your way."

"It's our anniversary, Marcus." She kissed the side of his head and started opening drawers, looking for the corkscrew that had never once in twenty-five years been where either of them expected it.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room had become a staging area for their daughter's college boxes. Deb told him about the woman at the bakery who'd asked what the occasion was, and how she'd felt strange saying it out loud—*twenty-five years*—like she was claiming credit for something she'd mostly just survived.

"That's not nothing," Marcus said.

"I didn't say it was nothing."

Afterward they took the cannoli out to the porch. The neighbor's sprinkler ticked through its rotation. Deb put her feet in his lap, and he held her ankle absently, the way he'd been doing since they were twenty-four, and neither of them said anything for a long while, and it was enough.


The Twentieth

Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, listening to the refrigerator hum, and decided against the restaurant. Twenty years ago they'd eaten at a diner in Fresno because it was the only place open after the courthouse closed, and Daniel had spilled coffee on his one good shirt.

She texted him: *Don't stop at Antonelli's. Change of plan.*

He wrote back a question mark, then, three minutes later, *ok but I already got the wine.*

By the time he came through the door she had the cast iron out and was cubing potatoes badly, the way she always did, uneven chunks that cooked at different rates. Daniel set the bottle on the counter, looked at the cutting board, and said nothing about it, which she noticed and appreciated.

"Diner food," she said.

"You want me to spill something on myself?"

"Only if it feels natural."

He took over the potatoes without asking and she let him, moving to the eggs. They worked around each other in the narrow galley kitchen, a choreography twenty years old — his hip against her lower back, her hand on his shoulder as she reached past for the pepper. Outside it had started raining, the good kind, steady.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room. Daniel poured the wine into juice glasses because the stemware was in the china cabinet and neither of them wanted to get up.

"I keep thinking I should say something," he said.

"You don't have to."

"I know. That's sort of the thing I'd say."

Marisol laughed and reached across for his hand, and they sat there a while with the rain going and the potatoes only half cooked in the middle, which was, she thought, about right.


The Twenty-Fifth

Diane got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning: *Don't buy flowers. I mean it.*

He'd bought flowers. Grocery store carnations, dyed an unconvincing blue, sitting in a water glass because they didn't own a vase anymore. The old one broke during the move in 2011.

"They were four dollars," Paul said from the doorway. "I'm not apologizing."

"I didn't ask you to."

He'd started dinner, which meant he'd taken the chicken out of the freezer and was now consulting his phone with the expression of a man defusing something. Diane took over. He didn't argue. This was a system twenty-five years in the making.

They'd talked about going out. Somewhere with cloth napkins, maybe the place in Ann Arbor with the tasting menu. Then Diane's mother had her fall in February and the money went there instead, and neither of them had brought it up again. It turned out neither of them had wanted to.

"I found the tape," Paul said.

"You did not."

"In the box with the Christmas stuff. Why it was there, I have no theory."

So after dinner they sat on the couch with the ancient camcorder hooked to the TV through an adapter he'd ordered in September, apparently planning this, and watched themselves at twenty-six. Diane in her mother's dress. Paul with hair. The reception in his uncle's backyard, the cake sliding sideways in the heat.

"You look terrified," she said.

"I was terrified."

"Of what?"

He thought about it longer than she expected. "Getting it wrong. Not the wedding. The rest."

Diane put her feet in his lap. Outside, a car went past, then nothing.

"You didn't," she said.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her coat, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat, I'm cooking* — and felt a small satisfaction that Marcus hadn't crossed it out and written something smart underneath.

Fifteen years. Not the wedding — that was in June, and they'd celebrate it the way they always did, with a card and a decent bottle of wine and Marcus falling asleep during the movie. This was the other one. October fourth, the night she'd sat on the hood of his terrible Corolla in the Wegmans parking lot and told him she was staying in Rochester instead of taking the Chicago job.

She had the salmon out and the oven preheating when he came through the garage door.

"You're early," he said.

"So are you."

"I left at four. Told Rick I had a thing." He set down a paper bag and pulled out a bottle. "I got the Sancerre. The one from the place in Buffalo."

"That's forty dollars."

"It's forty-two." He was already reaching past her for the corkscrew, his hand on her hip to move her over, a gesture so worn-in that neither of them registered it. "You're burning the garlic."

"I'm *browning* the garlic."

They ate at the actual table, which required clearing off two months of mail. Marcus talked about the Corolla, how the passenger window hadn't gone down since 2011. Dana said she'd been terrified that night, that she'd rehearsed it for a week and still got it wrong.

"You didn't get it wrong."

"I said 'I guess I'm staying.' *I guess.*"

"I knew what you meant." He refilled her glass. "I've known what you meant for fifteen years."

Outside, the neighbor's dog started up. Neither of them got up to close the window.


The Twentieth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't buy anything. I mean it.* Marcus had drawn a small skeptical face beneath it in blue pen.

She started the rice. Twenty years ago they'd eaten takeout on the floor of an apartment in Sacramento with no furniture, using a moving box as a table, and she'd said something like *this is the worst dinner of my life* and he'd said *give it time.*

Marcus came in at six-forty with grocery bags and the guilty posture of a man who has bought something.

"That's not nothing," she said.

"It's ingredients. Ingredients aren't a gift." He set the bags down and kissed the side of her head. "You started the rice already?"

"I got out early."

"Then I'm making the rest."

She let him. She sat on the stool at the counter with a glass of wine and watched him mince garlic badly, the way he always had, chunks the size of pencil erasers. He talked about a coworker's ridiculous email chain. She told him about the hawk that had landed on the fire escape at work and stared at everyone through the window for ten minutes.

They ate at the table because Marcus insisted, though they usually ate on the couch. Halfway through, Dana got up, came back with a shoebox, and slid it across.

"You said nothing," he said.

"It's not nothing. It's the moving box." She'd cut a square out of the cardboard and framed it, badly. "I found it in the garage."

Marcus looked at it for a while. Then he laughed, and put his hand flat over hers on the table, and neither of them said anything for a minute, which was fine.


The Twentieth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *don't make plans* — and felt suddenly foolish about it, as though twenty years required an announcement.

She put the chicken in at five. By the time Marcus came through the door at six-fifteen, smelling like the cold and the parking garage, the house had that heavy roasted smell that meant winter.

"You cooked," he said.

"Don't sound so shocked."

"I'm not shocked. I'm strategizing." He held up a paper bag. "I brought the good bourbon and a very small cake, and I was going to claim I planned all this."

"You can still claim it."

"I will. Loudly. To anyone who asks."

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television, which felt formal enough to be slightly comic. Dana had lit two candles she'd found in the hall closet, one vanilla and one cinnamon, and the smells fought each other all through dinner.

"Twenty years," Marcus said. "Do you remember what we did for the first one?"

"You took me to that Italian place on Kirkwood and we couldn't afford appetizers."

"We split the lasagna."

"You gave me the bigger half and then stared at it the whole time."

He laughed, which turned into a cough, which he waved off. Dana got up and refilled his water without being asked, and he took it without being asked, and something about that exchange struck her as more romantic than anything they'd said.

After, they did the dishes together — him washing, her drying, the same arrangement since the apartment on Fifth. The cake sat untouched on the counter.

"Should we?" she said.

"Tomorrow," Marcus said. "Let's sit down."

So they did, on the couch, the candles still going, not talking much.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the ingredients that morning: two ribeyes, a bag of fingerling potatoes, a head of garlic already half-shriveled.

Ten years since the courthouse in Reno. Twelve since they'd met at the laundromat on Ferris Street, where Danny had asked to borrow quarters and then, absurdly, offered to fold her sheets.

She had the potatoes halved and oiled by the time he came in, stamping snow off his boots.

"You beat me," he said.

"Jerry let us out early. Slow Tuesday."

Danny hung his coat and came up behind her, resting his chin on the top of her head, which he could only do if she was slouching. She slouched. He smelled like sawdust and the cold.

"I got the wine," he said. "The one with the bird on it."

"That's the one I like."

"I know it's the one you like. I've been buying it for ten years."

He salted the steaks while she scrubbed the roasting pan. They didn't talk much. The radio was on, low, tuned to the AM station that played big band on weeknights, which they both pretended to tolerate for the other's sake and both secretly liked.

Around eight they ate at the kitchen table because the dining room was full of boxes from her mother's house. Danny had overcooked his steak and undercooked hers, so they traded halfway through without discussing it.

"Ten years," Marisol said.

"Ten years." He refilled her glass. "You want to do anything? Movie?"

She thought about it. The snow was coming down harder past the window, blue in the streetlight.

"No," she said. "This is good."

He reached over and took her hand, and they sat there a while, the plates going cold between them.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her work badge, looking at the counter and trying to remember what she'd planned. Salmon. She'd planned salmon, and that lemon-butter thing Marcus liked, and the good plates instead of the chipped ones.

He came in at 6:40, apologizing before the door was fully open.

"The bridge," he said.

"I know. I heard it on the radio." She handed him a glass of wine, which he took and set down immediately so he could get his coat off.

They cooked together, mostly. She did the fish; he did the potatoes, which meant he stood at the stove pushing them around longer than necessary because he liked the edges crispy and never trusted her to wait. Fifteen years and he still didn't trust her with the potatoes.

"Do you remember what we ate?" he asked. "At the actual thing."

"Chicken. There was a vegetarian option nobody took."

"My mother took it."

"Your mother took it to make a point." Dana pulled the pan out and let it rest. "She's mellowed."

"She has not mellowed. She's just tired."

They ate at the table instead of in front of the TV, which was the whole plan, the entire ambition of the evening. No reservations, no hotel, no cards with printed poems in them. Their daughter was at a friend's house until nine-thirty. The dishwasher hummed behind them.

Marcus refilled her glass. "I would do it again," he said, not looking up, the way he said things that mattered.

"That's a low bar."

"It isn't, actually."

Dana reached across and put her hand over his wrist, on the knob of bone there she had known for half her life, and left it a while, and neither of them said anything else for a minute or two.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't stop for takeout* — and felt suddenly unsure whether that had been charming or bossy.

She hung up the coat and started the sauce. Fifteen years ago, in a rented apartment in Cleveland with a stove that only had two working burners, she had made the same thing badly, and Mark had eaten all of it.

He came in at six-forty, later than he'd promised, carrying a paper bag.

"I said don't stop."

"It's not food." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Chianti they'd drunk that first year, the kind with the straw basket. "They had it at the Giant Eagle. I nearly cried in the aisle."

"You did not."

"I nearly did. That's different."

She let him kiss her, and then handed him the garlic to mince, because he was better at it and they both knew it. He put on the radio instead of anything from a phone, and they worked around each other in the small kitchen the way they had learned to over fifteen years, hip to hip, one stepping back as the other reached.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television. Mark told her about the argument he'd almost had with his brother; she told him about the woman at work who kept microwaving fish. Neither of them made a speech. Around nine, Dana put her feet in his lap and he rubbed the arch of her right foot, the one that always ached.

"Fifteen," he said.

"Fifteen," she agreed, and did not open her eyes.

The wine was terrible. They finished it anyway.


The Twentieth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat, I mean it* — and felt a small, ridiculous flush of accomplishment.

She had the chicken out of the fridge before she took her shoes off. Twenty years ago tonight, in a rented apartment in Bloomington with a radiator that clanked like someone was trapped inside it, Michael had made her roast chicken and undercooked potatoes and asked her to marry him somewhere around the second glass of wine. She'd said yes with her mouth full.

He came in at six-forty, snow on his shoulders, holding a paper bag.

"You cooked," he said.

"Don't sound so shocked."

"I'm not shocked. I'm strategizing." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the same terrible Chianti they'd drunk that night, the kind with the straw basket. "I had to go to three places."

Dana laughed. "That's disgusting. We're drinking all of it."

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room had become a staging area for their daughter's college boxes. Michael carved badly, the way he always had. Dana told him about the woman at work who'd tried to microwave a hard-boiled egg. He told her the transmission was making a noise again.

Afterward he washed and she dried, hip to hip at the sink, and he said, "Twenty."

"Twenty," she agreed.

"You want to watch something?"

"I want to sit down."

So they sat on the couch with the lamp on and the television off, and Dana put her feet in his lap, and Michael held her ankle absently the way he'd been doing for two decades, and neither of them said anything else for a long while.


The rain started around four, which meant the grill was out. Dana stood at the kitchen window watching water bead on the patio umbrella and reconsidered the whole plan.

"We could do the oven," Marcus said, coming in with the grocery bag still hooked on his wrist. "Broil them. It's not the same, but."

"It's fine. It was always about the potatoes anyway."

He laughed. Ten years ago, on their second date, she'd made him a baked potato at eleven at night because it was the only thing in her apartment, and he'd eaten it standing up at the counter and said, unwisely and truthfully, that he could see himself doing this for a long time. She had not let him forget it. Every anniversary, potatoes.

She scrubbed them while he pulled the steaks out and salted them heavily, the way his father had taught him, and they moved around each other in the small kitchen without collision, a choreography twelve years in the making. The oven ticked as it heated.

"Your mother called," Marcus said. "She wanted to know if we were going out."

"What did you tell her?"

"That we were staying in. She said that was sad."

"It's not sad."

"I know it's not sad."

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room table had a jigsaw puzzle on it, half finished, a lighthouse. Dana had opened a bottle of wine that had been in the cabinet since her promotion and it turned out to be nothing special, and they drank it anyway. Outside the rain kept on steadily.

Later Marcus washed and Dana dried, and she leaned against him for a moment, her forehead between his shoulder blades, and neither of them said anything, which was the point. Then she went to the dining room and found, after some searching, a piece of the sky.


Marguerite came home with the good bread, the kind with the hard crust that shattered when you cut it, and found Dev already at the counter with the shallots half-diced.

"You're early," she said.

"I left at four. Nobody noticed." He tipped the shallots into the pan and they went quiet, then loud. "Did you get the cheese?"

"I got two. The one you like and the one I like."

Twenty-two years ago that night, they had eaten at a diner on Route 9 because it was the only place open after the movie, and Dev had said something about how he didn't want to date anyone else, and Marguerite had said okay in a voice so flat he asked her twice if she meant it. They had not gotten married until four years later, but this was the anniversary they kept. The wedding one belonged to their families. This one was theirs.

She set the table with the cloth napkins, which meant something, and lit the two squat candles from the hall closet. Outside the kitchen window the neighbor's motion light kept clicking on for nothing.

"Do you want music?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Good. Me neither."

They ate slowly. Dev had overdone the garlic and said so before she could, and she said she liked it that way, and it was half true. He asked about her sister. She asked whether he was going to take the job in Albany, and he said he was leaning toward no, and she said she'd figured, and neither of them pushed further, because there was time.

Later he washed and she dried, standing close in the narrow galley, bumping hips, not apologizing for it.

"Twenty-two," he said.

"Twenty-two," she agreed, and hung the towel on the oven door.


The Twelfth Year

The reservation had been canceled two weeks ago, when Dana realized she'd rather not spend their anniversary shouting over a bistro's espresso machine.

"You're sure?" Michael had asked. "Twelve years feels like a restaurant year."

"Twelve years feels like a stay-home year," she'd said, and he'd been quietly relieved.

Now it was Saturday, six-fifteen, and their kitchen in the rented half of a duplex in Grand Rapids smelled like garlic and scorched butter. Michael was hunched over the stove in a t-shirt, poking at scallops with the intensity of a man defusing something.

"They're supposed to be golden," he said. "These are the color of a manila envelope."

"That's a color." Dana came in from the dining room, where she'd been setting out the good plates — a wedding gift from his aunt, used maybe nine times. She had a bottle of prosecco under one arm and their old iPod dock in the other hand. "Do you remember the playlist from the reception?"

"I remember your cousin requested 'Free Bird.'"

"I made a new one." She plugged it in. Something slow and unfamiliar came on, and Michael raised his eyebrows at her over his shoulder.

"This isn't reception music."

"No. This is us-now music."

They ate at seven, sitting catty-corner instead of across, because the table was too long and the distance felt formal. The scallops were fine. The asparagus was better. Michael told the story of their first apartment's broken radiator and Dana corrected two details, as she always did, and he let her, as he always did.

Afterward she washed and he dried, and when the last pan was in the rack he put his hands on her hips and they swayed in the small space between the sink and the refrigerator, not really dancing, just moving, until the song ended and neither of them stepped away.


Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He stood in the kitchen with the grocery bag still in his hand, looking at the counter where Dana had left a note under the salt shaker: *Don't order anything. I'm cooking. — D.*

He laughed out loud in the empty house. Twelve years, and she still thought she could beat him to it.

By the time she came through the door at six-fifteen, he had the chicken already browning, the good wine open, and her note pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like Ohio.

"You're a criminal," Dana said, dropping her bag by the stairs.

"You left the note where I'd see it. That's entrapment."

She came up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the pan. "You're going to overcook that."

"I have never once overcooked chicken."

"Thanksgiving, 2019."

"That was a turkey. Different animal entirely."

She took the wooden spoon out of his hand anyway, and he let her, and went to set the table. They'd agreed on no gifts this year — the roof had eaten the budget in March — and no restaurant, because the last three anniversaries had involved parking garages and waiting for a table while both of them pretended they weren't tired.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room was where the tax paperwork lived now. Dana lit two candles that didn't match. Marcus told her about the argument he'd lost at work, and she told him about the woman in her building who'd started leaving passive-aggressive notes about the recycling, and somewhere in the middle of it she reached over and put her hand on his wrist for no particular reason.

Later, doing dishes, he asked if she'd wanted something bigger.

Dana handed him a plate to dry. "This is the bigger thing," she said. "It just doesn't look like it from outside."


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning—*Don't make plans*—and felt suddenly foolish, like a teenager.

She had the salmon out and the oven preheating when Marcus came through the door at 6:40, carrying a paper bag from the wine shop on Cortland.

"You went to Bianchi's," she said.

"You said don't make plans. You didn't say don't buy wine." He set the bag down and kissed the side of her head. "Also I got the bread. The seeded one you like."

"I already got bread."

"Then we'll have two breads. It's an occasion."

They cooked without much talking, moving around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the practiced choreography of eleven years in the same apartment. Marcus did the green beans because Dana always overcooked them. Dana did the fish because Marcus was afraid of fish. At some point he put on the Bill Withers record his brother had given them, and she laughed, because it was the same one they'd played that first winter in the place on Halsted, when the radiator clanked all night and they didn't care.

"Fifteen years," he said, pouring.

"Fifteen years since the courthouse. Seventeen since the bus stop."

"I'm counting the bus stop."

"You always count the bus stop."

They ate at the small table by the window. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Dana talked about her sister's new job; Marcus complained about a contractor. Neither of them made a speech.

Later, clearing plates, he said, "Was this what you wanted? Just this?"

She handed him a dish to dry. "This is exactly what I wanted."


The Twentieth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning—*Don't eat, I mean it*—and felt a small satisfaction that Marcus hadn't crumpled it up.

She started the sauce before she took her shoes off. Twenty years ago they'd eaten spaghetti out of the same pot in a studio apartment on Winslow Street because they'd spent everything on the deposit. Marcus had burned his tongue and pretended he hadn't.

He came in at six-forty, tie already loosened, holding a paper bag against his chest like something fragile.

"You went to Rossi's," she said.

"I went to Rossi's."

"We agreed. Nothing extravagant."

"It's a loaf of bread." He set it down and kissed the side of her head. "And a very small cake."

"How small?"

"Personal-sized. For two people who are personally very hungry."

She let it go. He rolled up his sleeves and took over the garlic, because he was better at it and they both knew it, and she moved to the table with two candles she'd found in the hall closet, half-burned from some Thanksgiving.

"I looked up what twenty is," Marcus said. "China. As in dishes."

"We have dishes."

"That's what I told the internet."

They ate slowly. The radiator knocked. Somewhere upstairs the neighbor's dog turned in circles. Dana talked about the impossible woman in accounts payable, and Marcus told her about a kid at the hardware store who'd asked him how to hang a shelf and then argued with the answer.

At nine they split the cake, which was in fact very small.

"Twenty," Dana said.

Marcus reached across and put his hand over hers, the way he did, not saying anything, and that was the whole evening, and it was enough.


The Twenty-Fifth

Marion got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning—*Don't stop at the store, I mean it*—and felt the particular satisfaction of a plan not yet ruined.

She had the salmon in the refrigerator, the good vinegar, the bottle of Riesling they'd bought in Michigan in August and forgotten about. Twenty-five years. It seemed both impossible and unremarkable, like most true things.

Dennis came in at six fifteen, snow on his shoulders, holding a paper bag.

"You went to the store."

"I went to Aldrich's," he said. "That's a bakery. Legally distinct."

She took the bag from him. Inside was a small round cake, white, with nothing written on it. She had expected something with piping, something embarrassing.

"They wanted to put our names on it," he said, reading her face. "I said no."

"Good."

He hung up his coat and rolled his sleeves and started on the potatoes without being asked, the way he had for a quarter century, and she stood at the stove with the pan heating and thought about the apartment on Delaware Avenue where the oven only worked if you held the door shut with a chair.

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room. Marion had considered the dining room and decided against it. Halfway through, Dennis raised his glass and then couldn't think of anything, and lowered it again.

"That's all right," she said.

"I had something."

"You'll have it later."

Outside, the snow kept on. He remembered it around ten, standing at the sink with a dish towel, and told her, and she said it was worth waiting for, and mostly meant it.


The rain started around four, which Marisol took as a good sign. Rain meant Danny wouldn't be able to work on the fence, and she'd have him to herself all evening.

She got home first and found the good plates already out, which meant he'd left work early too. He was in the kitchen with his sleeves pushed up, doing something aggressive to a chicken breast with a mallet.

"You're pounding it too thin," she said.

"I'm pounding it correctly." He didn't look up. "Twelve years ago you told me you liked a man who could cook."

"Eleven. And I said I liked a man who could *order*."

He laughed at that, finally, and she came around the counter to take the mallet from him. They'd done this dance before—she cooked, he narrated. Tonight she let him keep the chicken and started on the salad instead, tearing romaine while he told her about the guy at the shop who'd tried to sell him a boat.

Eleven years since the courthouse. There had been no wedding, technically. Her mother still brought it up. But there had been that Tuesday in March, the two of them and Danny's brother as witness, and afterward pancakes at a diner on Route 9 that had since become a vape shop.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the TV. Danny had bought a bottle of wine that cost more than he'd admit to, and they drank most of it. Around nine she found the old photo on her phone—the two of them outside the courthouse, both squinting, her hair unfortunate.

"We looked like children," she said.

"You looked beautiful."

"I looked twenty-six."

He took the phone from her, studied it a moment, then set it face-down on the table and reached for her hand.


Marcus came home from the hardware store with a bag of charcoal and the wrong kind of onions, which Dana pointed out before he'd finished setting down his keys.

"Sweet, I said. These are yellow."

"They're onions."

"They're for the salsa." She held one up like evidence at a trial, then laughed and set it on the counter. "Fine. We'll survive."

Fifteen years ago that night, they'd met at a friend's cookout in Tulsa, where Marcus had burned every burger on the grill and Dana had eaten one anyway to be polite, then admitted three weeks later that it had tasted like a tire. They'd built a small tradition around it — no restaurant, no crowd, just the two of them and whatever Marcus could manage over coals in the backyard.

He got the chimney starter going while she chopped. Their house in Fort Collins sat on a corner lot with a fence he kept meaning to stain. The evening went gold, then blue. Somewhere down the block a kid was practicing trumpet, badly.

"Do you want the good plates?" she called through the screen door.

"We're eating outside."

"That's not an answer."

She brought the good plates. They ate at the picnic table with a citronella candle between them, and the burgers were, Dana noted, only slightly overdone, which she called personal growth. Marcus said fifteen years was a long time to wait for a compliment.

After, they sat with the plates pushed aside. Dana put her feet in his lap. He asked if she remembered what she'd been wearing that first night and she said yes, a green sundress with a broken strap she'd safety-pinned in the car. He said he remembered the safety pin.

"You did not."

"I did. I thought, that woman has a plan."

She let that sit a moment. Then she reached over and took his hand, and neither of them said anything for a while.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the good cutting board that morning, and tried to remember whether they'd agreed on salmon or the chicken thing with the lemons.

Salmon. She'd texted him a picture of the recipe at 11:40, between meetings.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his sleeves, she had the oven preheating and a bottle of wine sweating on the counter — not the expensive one they'd been saving, because they'd learned in year six that saving things was mostly a way of never having them.

"Ten years," he said, hanging his coat on the chair instead of the hook. She let it go.

"Ten years of you doing that with your coat."

He kissed the side of her head and took over the asparagus, because he cut it more evenly and they both knew it. They worked around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the unconscious choreography of a decade — she stepped left, he stepped right, neither of them looking up.

They'd talked about going out. There was a place downtown with a tasting menu and a three-week wait. But Marcus had said, honestly, that he'd rather not spend their anniversary being handed small plates by a stranger, and Dana had been so relieved she'd laughed.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the TV. Marcus told the story about the flat tire on their second date, which he told every year, and Dana corrected the details, which she also did every year.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and she said, "Same time next year?"

"I'll pencil you in," he said, and handed her a plate.


The Twentieth

Marguerite got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter she'd wiped that morning, and decided the evening would begin with the good tablecloth.

By the time Dev came in, stamping November off his shoes, she had the linen down and was arguing with a candle that refused to stand straight in its holder.

"You're supposed to be stuck in traffic," he said.

"Sanders canceled the four o'clock. I took it as a sign."

He set down two grocery bags. Inside: a bag of arborio rice, a container of stock, a wedge of parmesan, and a bottle of the Barolo they'd had in Turin on a trip they'd taken when they were poorer and younger and hadn't understood how expensive the wine was until the check came.

"Risotto," she said. "You know that means standing at the stove for forty minutes."

"I know. That's the point. We can talk while I stir."

So he stirred and she sat on the counter beside him with her shoes off, feeding him ladles of stock when he held out his hand. They talked about the leak in the upstairs bathroom, about whether Tess would come home for Christmas or stay in Denver with the new boyfriend, about the strange fact that twenty years had gone by and neither of them had noticed it happening except in retrospect, all at once, the way you notice a hill only after you've climbed it.

The candle finally stood. They ate at the table instead of in front of the television. The wine wasn't as good as they remembered.

"It's better," Dev said, "because we're not worried about the check."

Marguerite laughed and refilled his glass. Outside, the first hard rain of the season started, and neither of them got up to close the window.


The kitchen still smelled like garlic when Dana came in from the garage, shaking rain off her coat. Ren was at the stove, sleeves pushed up, stirring something with the wooden spoon that had been splitting along the handle for three years.

"You're early," he said.

"I left the last invoice for Monday." She hung her coat on the hook by the door, the one they'd argued about installing and now couldn't imagine living without. "What is that?"

"Cacio e pepe. Or an attempt."

"Twenty years ago you microwaved a hot dog for me and called it dinner."

"Twenty years ago you ate it."

She laughed and got the wine down from above the refrigerator, a bottle they'd bought on a trip to the Finger Lakes and kept meaning to open. Ren had already set the table—two plates, the cloth napkins from the drawer nobody opened, a candle in a jam jar because the actual candlesticks had gone missing sometime during the last move.

"Cara called," Dana said, working the corkscrew. "She wanted to know if we were doing anything fancy."

"What did you tell her?"

"That we were staying in and you were cooking, and she said that sounded sad, and I said she'd understand in thirty years."

Ren tasted the sauce, made a face, added pepper. "It broke a little."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine, but it's edible."

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television. Outside, the rain kept up against the windows. Dana talked about her sister's move; Ren mentioned the leak under the bathroom sink, then apologized for mentioning it.

"Don't," she said. "That's the whole thing, isn't it. Leaks and invoices."

He refilled her glass. "Happy anniversary."

"Happy anniversary." She reached across and put her hand over his, and they sat there a while, letting the pasta go cold.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the counter: the good cutting board, the bottle of Sancerre they'd been saving without ever deciding what for.

Marcus texted from the car. *Ten minutes. Did you get bread?*

*Obviously not,* she wrote back, and then, *There's the heel of the sourdough.*

*Tragic.*

By the time he came in, she had the radio on low and was searing scallops badly, the pan too crowded, the way he always told her not to. He didn't say anything about it. He set down a paper bag—bread, and a small carton of the lemon sorbet she liked—and hung his coat on the chair instead of the hook.

"Fifteen years," he said.

"Fifteen years of you not using the hook."

He moved behind her, took the tongs out of her hand, and turned the scallops one by one. She let him. She poured the wine into the jelly glasses because the real glasses were somewhere in the boxes they still hadn't unpacked from the move in April.

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, because the dining room had become where Marcus's mother's things were stacked since February. Dana asked about the deposition. He asked whether the Hartley account had come through. Then they stopped doing that.

"Do you remember the mice?" she said.

He laughed, surprised. Their first apartment in Providence, the mice in the oven drawer, Dana standing on a chair at two in the morning, furious and delighted.

"You said you'd never live anywhere with a basement again."

"I lied."

Afterward they sat on the couch with the sorbet between them and one spoon, arguing mildly about whether to start the next episode. They didn't. Marcus fell asleep first. Dana turned off the lamp and stayed a while, listening to the house settle.


The Twenty-Fifth

Diane got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't stop at the store, I've got it* — and felt a small satisfaction that Martin had listened for once.

She had it, technically. A rotisserie chicken, a bag of the good rolls, and the bottle of Chianti they'd been saving since Rob's wedding. Twenty-five years didn't seem like it should be marked with a rotisserie chicken, but they'd agreed: no restaurant, no crowd, no driving forty minutes to Providence to eat food they'd have to comment on.

Martin came in at six-twenty, snow on his shoulders, holding a paper bag against his chest like something breakable.

"You said don't stop at the store."

"This isn't the store. This is the bakery."

He set it down and unrolled the top. Inside was a small round cake, white frosting, no writing on it. Diane looked at it a while.

"They wanted to put something on it," he said. "I couldn't think what."

"That's fine. That's better."

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room was still full of boxes from her mother's house. Martin poured the Chianti into juice glasses, the stemware being packed somewhere, and Diane didn't say anything about it. He asked if she remembered the reception hall having that awful blue carpet, and she said it was green, and he said no, blue, and neither of them cared enough to look it up.

Afterward they sat on the couch and she put her feet in his lap, the way she did, and he held them without especially noticing he was doing it. The furnace kicked on. Outside, the snow kept up, quiet and steady, and neither of them got up to close the curtains for a long time.


The Twelfth Year

Renée got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning: *Don't eat. I mean it.*

By six-fifteen she had the chicken in the oven and the good plates down from the top shelf, the ones from Marcus's grandmother that they used maybe twice a year. She was reaching for the wine when she heard his key.

"You cooked," he said, setting down a paper bag.

"I cooked. Don't look so amazed."

"I'm not amazed. I'm suspicious." He kissed the side of her head and pulled a bottle out of the bag—the same cheap Malbec they'd bought the night they moved into the apartment on Delaware Avenue, back when they had one fork between them and ate off a cardboard box. He'd tracked it down at three stores.

Renée laughed out loud. "You didn't."

"Nine dollars. It's gone up."

They ate at the table instead of in front of the TV. The chicken was slightly dry and neither of them mentioned it. Marcus talked about a coworker's disastrous retirement party; Renée told him about the woman at the pharmacy who'd asked if she was a nurse and then wouldn't accept that she wasn't.

Twelve years since the courthouse. No photographer, no flowers, her mother furious about the short notice and then crying anyway.

"You want to do something?" Marcus asked, clearing the plates. "There's still time to catch a movie."

Renée considered it. Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped.

"No," she said. "Let's stay."

So they stayed. He washed, she dried. Later they sat on the couch with the second half of the terrible wine and argued pleasantly about whether the chicken had been dry, and it was, by any measure, an ordinary Thursday, and neither of them would have traded it.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, and then she took the coat off and started pulling things out of the refrigerator.

By the time Danny came in at six-forty, there was a pot of water going and the good tablecloth—the one his mother had given them, cream-colored, faintly ridiculous—laid over the small table by the window.

"You beat me," he said.

"Only because Ruthie canceled her four o'clock."

He set down a paper bag. Inside was a bottle of the same cheap Chianti they'd drunk ten years ago in the apartment on Delancey, when the radiator had banged all night and neither of them slept.

"You didn't," she said.

"They still make it. It's still terrible."

She laughed and took two water glasses down from the cabinet, because they'd broken one wineglass in the move and never replaced the set. Danny found the corkscrew in the drawer with the batteries and the takeout menus. He poured while she dropped pasta into the water and stirred it with a wooden spoon.

They ate slowly. Outside, someone was scraping ice off a windshield. Marisol told him about a patient who had cried in her office over a dog, and Danny told her about the argument he'd lost at work and how he'd been right anyway. She reached over and took a piece of bread off his plate without asking, which was a thing she had done for a decade.

"Ten years," he said.

"Ten years since the courthouse. Eleven since Delancey."

"I'm counting the courthouse."

"You would."

He refilled her glass. She put her feet up on the empty chair. Nobody called, and they didn't turn on the television, and the evening went on like that a long while.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into the steady drum that Marguerite always associated with October in Portland. She stood at the kitchen counter, sleeves pushed to her elbows, working butter into flour with her fingertips because Dev insisted the pastry cutter made the crust tough.

"You're going to overwork it," he said from the doorway, still in his work clothes, tie loosened.

"I've made this pie eleven times."

"Twelve." He set his bag down and came to stand beside her, close enough that she could smell rain on his jacket. "You made one the night before we signed the mortgage. You just didn't let anyone eat it."

"It was a disaster."

"It was a disaster," he agreed, and kissed the side of her head.

Twenty years. It seemed both impossible and entirely unremarkable, the way a mountain looks small from far enough away. They had discussed going out — there was a place on Alberta that Dev's coworkers wouldn't shut up about — but Marguerite had said she'd rather stay in, and he'd admitted, with some relief, that he would too.

He changed into a sweater and took over the filling, slicing apples thin the way she liked, dropping the peels into the compost bin. They didn't talk much. The oven ticked as it heated. At some point he put on the record she'd given him for his fortieth, and they moved around each other in the small kitchen with the particular choreography of people who have shared a space for a long time.

"I found the photos," he said eventually. "From Crater Lake. You look about fourteen."

"I was twenty-six."

"You looked fourteen."

She flicked flour at him. Later they ate the pie on the couch, plates on their knees, listening to the rain, and neither of them said anything about how fast it had gone.


The rain started around four, which meant the grill was out. Dana stood at the kitchen window watching water bead on the patio umbrella and considered whether disappointment was worth the energy.

"We could do the oven," Marcus said behind her. He had the steaks out already, still in butcher paper, and a dish towel over his shoulder. "Four-fifty, cast iron, finish with butter. Honestly it might be better."

"You've been saying you'd grill for two weeks."

"I've been saying a lot of things for two weeks." He set the package down. "Ten years, Dana. I'm not going to let a low-pressure system ruin it."

She turned from the window. The kitchen still had the half-painted wall they'd been arguing about since March—a swatch of greenish gray they'd both agreed on and then both quietly hated. She'd stopped noticing it most days. Tonight she noticed.

"I got the wine," she said. "The Oregon one. From that place in Dundee."

Marcus looked up. "The one we drove three hours out of the way for?"

"Two and a half."

"It was three."

She got the glasses down while he heated the pan, and the smoke alarm went off exactly as they both knew it would, and Marcus waved the towel at the ceiling while Dana opened the back door and let in the wet air and the sound of rain on the gutters. The steaks were good. They ate at the actual table instead of the couch, which felt slightly formal, slightly like a performance of being people who ate at tables.

Afterward Dana refilled both glasses. Marcus put his hand flat on the table, palm down, and she covered it with hers.

"Ten years," she said.

"Ten years." He tipped his glass toward the half-painted wall. "Next one we finish that."

"You said that last year."

"I did," he agreed, and neither of them moved.


The Twelfth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, trying to remember whether they'd agreed on cooking or ordering. Twelve years. The number seemed both enormous and unremarkable.

She was slicing a lemon when Marcus came through the door, holding a paper bag against his chest like something fragile.

"You beat me," he said.

"Barely. Traffic on Cermak was a nightmare."

He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the same cheap prosecco they'd drunk on the courthouse steps in 2012, when neither of them had money for anything better. He'd been calling liquor stores for three days to find it.

Dana laughed out loud. "Oh, no. Oh, that's terrible."

"It's historically accurate."

They made pasta together, badly, the way they always did—Marcus overcooking the garlic, Dana adding too much salt and then trying to fix it with more water. Neither of them mentioned the argument from Tuesday, which had been about the dishwasher and had not actually been about the dishwasher. It sat in the room with them, deflating slowly.

Over dinner Marcus asked what she remembered most from that day, and Dana said the judge's tie, which had cartoon fish on it, and the way Marcus's hands had shaken.

"They did not shake."

"Marcus. They shook."

He conceded. He poured the prosecco, which was every bit as bad as they remembered, and they drank it anyway.

Afterward they moved to the couch and put on a movie neither of them watched. Dana fell asleep against his shoulder around ten-thirty. Marcus stayed awake a while longer, letting his arm go numb rather than move her, thinking that twelve years was a long time and also nothing at all, and that he would very much like to see how far this went.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She set the grocery bag on the counter—two ribeyes, a bag of arugula, the ugly heirloom tomatoes Peter liked because he said the ugly ones tasted better—and stood for a second in the quiet of the kitchen, listening to the refrigerator hum.

By the time Peter came in at six, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the cast iron heating and the radio tuned to the station that played standards on Friday nights.

"You beat me," he said.

"Barrett canceled. First good thing that man's ever done for me."

Peter kissed the side of her head and went to change out of his work clothes. When he came back in a T-shirt, he took over the steaks without being asked, because he was better at them and they both knew it, and Dana washed the arugula and sliced the tomatoes thick, laying them out on the blue platter they'd gotten as a wedding present from his aunt Ro, who had since died.

"Fifteen years," he said, pressing a steak with the flat of the spatula. "You know what they say. Crystal."

"Nobody says that."

"Somebody says it. There's a whole list."

"Did you get me crystal?"

"I got you a card and a bottle of the Malbec you like." He glanced over. "And I fixed the closet door."

Dana laughed. "That's the crystal."

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt like an occasion. Rain kept up against the window. Peter refilled her glass, and she told him about the client who cried in a conference room, and he told her about his brother's new obsession with kayaks, and neither of them looked at a phone.

Later she found the card propped against the sink. He'd written, *Still you.*


Marguerite found the recipe card in the drawer where they kept the takeout menus, still stained with olive oil from twelve years ago. She set it on the counter and started pulling things from the refrigerator.

"You're really doing it," Owen said from the doorway. He'd come home early, tie already loosened.

"I said I would."

"You said that last year." He crossed the kitchen and took the shallots from her hands. "Let me. You always cut too thick and then you complain about the texture."

She let him. She poured two glasses of the Rioja they'd been saving, which had probably turned by now, and set one near his elbow. Outside, the November dark came down over the neighbor's fence, over the grill they'd never covered for winter.

Twelve years since the courthouse. Nine since the house. Four since the year they didn't talk about, when Owen slept in the study and Marguerite learned every crack in the bedroom ceiling.

"It smells wrong," she said, leaning over the pan.

"It smells like it's supposed to. You just remember it wrong." He tipped in the wine. "You remember everything a little wrong."

"That's a terrible thing to say to your wife."

"It's a kind thing. You remember the bad parts wrong too."

She laughed and set the table, the good plates, no candles because Owen thought candles at dinner were theatrical. They ate at the small table by the window, not the dining room, which they only used when her sister visited. The chicken was good. Better than she remembered, which proved his point, though she didn't say so.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they stood at the sink not talking, the radiator ticking in the next room. When the last pan was put away he kissed the side of her head, briefly, the way he had ten thousand times.

"Same again next year," he said.

"Same again," she said.


The Twentieth

The pot roast had been in since two, and by six the whole house smelled like Sunday even though it was a Thursday. Diane stood at the counter slicing carrots thinner than she needed to, just to keep her hands busy.

"You're overdoing the carrots," Michael said from the doorway. He'd changed out of his work clothes into the gray sweater she'd given him three Christmases ago, the one with the loose thread at the cuff she kept meaning to fix.

"I'm being precise."

"You're nervous."

She set the knife down. "It's twenty years, Michael. That deserves precision."

He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the cutting board, then reached past her for the bottle of wine they'd been saving—a Napa cabernet a friend had given them in 2019, sitting in the pantry ever since waiting for an occasion.

"You're opening that?"

"If not now, when? We'll be too old to taste it."

She laughed and let him work the corkscrew while she set the table, two plates instead of five. Their oldest was in Chicago, the twins at their grandmother's for the night. The dining room felt enormous.

They ate slowly. Michael told the story of their wedding again, the part where the caterer's van broke down on Route 9 and her uncle drove out with his truck to save the day. She'd heard it four hundred times. She let him tell it.

Afterward they carried their glasses into the living room and put on a record instead of the television. Diane pulled her feet up under her on the couch. Michael sat close enough that his shoulder touched hers.

"Twenty," he said.

"Twenty."

Outside, a car went by, headlights sweeping the wall. Neither of them got up to close the curtains.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't buy anything. I mean it.* Marcus had drawn a small skeptical face beneath it.

She started the water for the pasta. Fifteen years ago they'd eaten spaghetti out of the same pot in an apartment on Vernor with a radiator that clanked like someone was trapped inside it. They'd had eleven dollars between them and a card table someone had left in the alley.

The front door. Marcus came in shaking rain off his jacket, holding a paper bag against his chest like a football.

"That better not be anything," Dana said.

"It's bread." He set it down. "Bread is a food group, not a gift."

"Uh-huh."

"And a candle. One candle. It was two dollars."

She let it go. He found the corkscrew in the drawer that stuck, and she pretended not to watch him fight with it, the way his jaw set, the gray coming in at his temples now, thicker this year than last. He got the cork out and made a small triumphant noise, and she laughed at him, and he pointed the corkscrew at her like a warning.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Marcus told the story about the card table, which she had heard four hundred times and would have been disappointed not to hear.

"You said you'd give it two years," she said.

"I said *at least* two years. I was managing expectations."

Outside, the rain kept on. Dana reached across and put her hand over his, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was the point.


The Twelfth Year

Nadia got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, taking inventory: the good olive oil, half a lemon, a package of scallops she'd bought on impulse at the Whole Foods off Route 9. Twelve years. Not a round number, not the kind that made people throw parties. That was exactly why she'd wanted it quiet.

By the time Elias came through the door at six-forty, she had the burners going and the radio on low, some station out of Amherst playing a live set from decades ago.

"You cooked," he said, setting down his bag. "I brought a pie. From that place near the clinic. I panicked."

"What kind?"

"Blueberry. It's February. I have questions about it too."

He rolled his sleeves and started on the salad without being asked, the way he'd been doing since their first apartment in Somerville, the one with the radiator that clanged like someone was trapped inside it. He was slower now. His knuckles had started giving him trouble in the cold, and he'd stopped pretending otherwise sometime last spring.

"Do you remember what we ate?" Nadia asked. "That night."

"Chinese. From the place that closed."

"You said you'd never seen anyone eat lo mein so aggressively."

"You were nervous."

"I was starving. There's a difference."

They ate at the small table, not the dining room, because the dining room was where they put the mail. The scallops were slightly overdone. Neither of them mentioned it.

Afterward, Elias washed and Nadia dried, and she told him about the argument with her department chair, and he told her about a patient who'd brought him tomatoes in a coffee can. The pie was better than it had any right to be.

At ten they went upstairs. The house settled. Outside, it began, very lightly, to snow.


Marcy found the recipe card in the back of the drawer, still stained with butter from twenty-five years ago. Her mother's handwriting, the pot roast they'd eaten the night Daniel proposed in the cramped kitchen of his apartment on Fillmore Street.

"You're actually making it," Daniel said, coming in from the garage with a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He had grease on his knuckles from adjusting the mower blade, and he washed his hands for a long time at the sink.

"Don't get excited. I've never gotten the gravy right."

"Nobody gets the gravy right. That's the point of the gravy." He set the bottle on the counter and pulled the paper down. Not champagne—a bottle of the terrible sweet red they'd bought for eleven dollars at the corner store in 1999, because it was all they could afford and neither of them knew anything about wine.

"Where did you even find that?"

"Same place that makes everything. The internet." He looked pleased with himself, which was his most reliable expression.

She browned the roast while he set the table, and then he stood behind her at the stove with his hand flat on her back, not moving it, watching the meat go dark at the edges. Outside, the neighbor's dog was carrying on about something. The kids were both at school in different states and had both called that morning, dutiful and rushed.

"Twenty-five," Marcy said.

"You want to say something profound?"

"Not particularly."

"Good." He reached past her and turned the burner down before it scorched. "I never know what to say either. I just keep showing up."

She let the spoon rest against the pot. Later the gravy would break, and they would eat it anyway, and it would be fine.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into the steady drum that Nadia loved. She stood at the kitchen window watching it bead on the glass while the pot of water came to a boil behind her.

"Do we have the good salt or just the box salt?" Owen called from the pantry.

"There's a difference?"

He emerged holding a small ceramic jar like evidence in a trial. "Your mother gave us this. Two Christmases ago. It's flaky."

"Then use it. Use all of it. Live dangerously."

They were making the same meal they'd made the night they moved into the apartment on Fulton Street eleven years ago—cacio e pepe, badly, because it had been the only thing either of them knew how to cook and they'd had exactly one pan. That night the pasta had come out gluey and they'd eaten it sitting on the floor between boxes, laughing, half-drunk on a bottle of wine someone's aunt had sent.

Owen cracked pepper into the skillet and it bloomed, sharp and green-smelling. Nadia reached past him for the tongs and he shifted his hip to let her in, a small choreography they'd worked out over years without ever discussing it.

"Do you want to do gifts before or after?" she asked.

"We said no gifts."

"I know what we said."

He grinned. "Mine's in the closet. Behind the vacuum."

"Mine's under the bed, so I win on effort."

They ate at the table with the lamp on low, because the overhead light was unforgiving and they'd both admitted, separately and then together, that they were vain about it. The pasta was better than it had been in 2013. Not perfect. Slightly clumped on one side.

"Still gluey," Owen said.

"Tradition," said Nadia, and refilled his glass.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat, I'm cooking* — and felt a small flare of satisfaction that Mateo hadn't crossed it out and written something smart underneath.

Fifteen years. Not the wedding, which came later, but the night in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen in Marshalltown when he'd said, "I think I want to do this with you," and she'd said, "Do what," just to make him say it out loud.

She had chicken thighs, lemons, a bag of good bread from the place on Third. She turned on the oven and shed the coat.

Mateo came in at six-forty with his tie loosened and a paper bag under one arm. "You're cooking," he said, unnecessarily.

"I said I would."

"I know. I brought insurance." He set the bag on the counter and pulled out a bottle of the Portuguese red they liked, plus a smaller bag from the bakery. "Also I got the almond thing. Don't argue."

"I wasn't going to argue about cake."

He washed his hands and started on the salad without being asked, tearing lettuce while she pulled the pan out. They didn't talk much. Somebody's dog was barking two houses down. The kitchen window went from blue to black.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the TV, which was the whole ceremony, really. Halfway through, Mateo said, "Do what," in a decent imitation of her twenty-four-year-old voice, and Dana laughed so hard she had to put her fork down.

Later she found him asleep on the couch with the cake untouched. She woke him up. They ate it standing in the kitchen, in the dark.


The rain started around four, which Elena took as a sign she'd made the right call canceling the reservation.

"Twelve years," Marcus said, setting the grocery bag on the counter. "And we're eating at home like a couple of retirees."

"We *are* practically retirees. You fell asleep during the news last Tuesday. Sitting up."

"That was a long Tuesday." He pulled out a package of pork chops, the good mustard, a bag of shallots. "Besides, you're the one who wanted this."

She was. The restaurant would have meant driving into the city, valet parking, a server named Chad describing the provenance of a beet. Twelve years ago they'd gotten married at the courthouse on a Thursday afternoon and eaten fried chicken from a gas station on the way home, because Marcus's cousin's wedding the following weekend had already eaten their budget. It had been, they agreed later, a better meal than most.

Elena put on the Chet Baker record, the one with the scratch in the third track that they'd both stopped hearing years ago. She poured wine into the jam jars they used when the real glasses were dirty, which was most of the time.

"Shallots or onion?" Marcus asked.

"You already bought shallots."

"I'm asking if I *should* have bought shallots."

"Then yes. Obviously yes."

He cooked. She sat on the counter beside the stove, close enough that he had to work around her knees, and told him about the woman at work who'd started bringing a parrot to the office. He laughed in the wrong places, which she'd come to find endearing.

They ate at the kitchen table with the overhead light off, just the stove hood and a candle Elena found in the junk drawer, a leftover from someone's birthday. The pork was slightly overdone. Neither of them mentioned it.

Afterward, Marcus washed and Elena dried, and the rain kept on against the window, steady and unremarkable and theirs.


Marguerite found the receipt still tucked in her wallet, soft as cloth from eleven years of being moved between billfolds. Twenty-two dollars and fourteen cents. Two plates of pancakes, coffee, and the slice of lemon pie they'd split at a diner outside Bloomington because neither of them had wanted the night to end.

"You still have that thing," Desmond said, coming in from the garage with a paper sack of lemons.

"It's an artifact. It belongs in a museum."

"It belongs in a landfill. It's going to disintegrate." He set the lemons on the counter and started rolling them under his palm, the way his mother had taught him, to loosen the juice. "Zester's in the drawer by the stove."

They had agreed on no restaurant. Eleven years wasn't a round number, and a Tuesday wasn't a Saturday, and the whole appeal of the thing was that it would be nobody's business but theirs. Marguerite made the crust while Desmond juiced. She overworked it slightly, the way she always did, and he didn't say anything, the way he always didn't.

The pie went in. They ate leftover chili standing up, because the table was covered in the tax paperwork neither had touched since April. Desmond put on the record she'd bought him for his birthday, and they danced badly in the four feet of open floor between the couch and the bookshelf, her socked feet on the cold spot where the vent blew.

"I would've married you at that diner," she said into his shirt.

"You'd have been the only one there in a windbreaker."

"You'd have worn one too. Out of solidarity."

The timer went off. The pie came out too dark at the edges and perfect in the middle. They ate it out of the dish with two forks, sitting on the floor, and did not save any for tomorrow.


The rain started around four, which Marcus took as a good sign. Nobody would expect them to go out in weather like this.

He'd left work early to get the chicken marinating. Twenty-five years ago, Delia had made him this exact dish—paprika, too much garlic, lemon—in her apartment on Sedgwick Street, and he'd known within three bites that he was going to marry her. She'd burned the rice that night. He'd eaten it anyway.

She came in at six, shaking water off her coat, and stopped in the doorway.

"You're cooking."

"Don't sound so alarmed."

"I'm not alarmed. I'm suspicious." She hung the coat on the hook by the door, the one he'd been meaning to remount for two years. "I got the wine. The Spanish one."

"The one we couldn't afford."

"We still can't." She set the bottle on the counter and looked at what he was doing to the chicken. "You're not going to sear that first?"

"I never sear it first."

"You always sear it first."

He handed her the tongs. This was the arrangement, more or less, and had been since the beginning: he started things, she corrected them, and somewhere in the argument the thing got done. She seared the chicken. He opened the wine and poured two glasses and put on the record they'd danced to at the reception, which skipped now in the second verse.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Delia asked if he remembered the rice. He said he remembered everything, which wasn't true, but was true enough.

Later, she fell asleep on the couch with her feet in his lap and the rain still going. He didn't wake her. He sat there a while, doing the arithmetic, and found he couldn't make twenty-five years account for how fast it had gone.


The Twentieth

Marguerite got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, considering the counter — the mail, the bowl of pears going soft, the spatter of tomato sauce from Tuesday that neither of them had wiped up.

She wiped it up. Then she took off her coat.

By the time Desmond came in at six-forty, she had the good plates down from the top shelf and was arguing with a bottle of wine they'd been saving so long the label had faded at the corner.

"You didn't have to cook," he said, setting down a paper bag.

"I didn't. I heated. There's a difference." She nodded at the bag. "What's that?"

"Bread. And a thing." He pulled out a small potted plant, some kind of succulent, sitting in a blue ceramic pot. "The florist was closed. This was the gas station."

Marguerite laughed — the real one, from the chest. "It's hideous."

"It's resilient."

"It's the two of us in a pot." She set it on the windowsill, adjusted it twice, and left it slightly crooked.

They ate at the table instead of the couch. Twenty years ago they'd eaten at a folding table in an apartment in Somerville, using a bath towel as a tablecloth because they hadn't unpacked. Desmond brought that up. Marguerite said she remembered it differently — she said the towel was his idea and he'd been very proud of it.

"I was proud of it."

"You were insufferable."

They didn't put music on. The radiator ticked. Outside, someone's dog was losing an argument with a squirrel.

At nine Marguerite fell asleep sitting up, glasses still on. Desmond took them off her face, folded them, and set them beside the ugly little plant.


Marisol got home first, which was rare. She set the grocery bag on the counter—the good bread, a wedge of taleggio, the tomatoes that had cost too much for February—and stood a moment in the quiet of the kitchen, listening to the radiator tick.

Twenty years. Not their wedding; that anniversary came in September and they always let it pass with a card and a decent bottle of wine. This was the other one, the February night in a Milwaukee bar when Dev had spilled half a beer on her sleeve and then talked to her until closing about a documentary neither of them had actually finished watching.

He came in at six-thirty, stamping snow off his boots. "You bought the expensive tomatoes."

"I bought the expensive tomatoes."

"Good." He hung his coat, kissed the side of her head, and started pulling down the heavy pan. They'd argued about dinner earlier in the week—he'd wanted to drive into the city, get a table somewhere with cloth napkins. She'd said she didn't want to spend the night parking. He'd relented faster than she expected, which told her he hadn't really wanted to go either.

They cooked mostly in silence, the practiced kind. He handled the pasta; she made the salad and opened the wine and put on the record he'd given her four Christmases ago. When they sat down, he raised his glass and couldn't think of anything to say, so he just said, "Twenty."

"Twenty," she agreed.

Later they moved to the couch. She put her feet in his lap. He asked if she remembered what he'd been wearing that night, and she said a terrible gray sweater, and he said it wasn't terrible, and she said it was, and neither of them was entirely sure who was right, and it didn't matter.

The snow kept falling. They stayed up later than they meant to.


The rain started around four, which meant the grill was out. Nadia found Marcus in the kitchen at five-thirty, already improvising, a cast-iron pan heating on the back burner.

"Twelve years," he said, without turning around. "You'd think I'd have learned to check the forecast."

"Twelve years and you still can't." She set down the bottle she'd picked up on the way home—not expensive, but the one they'd had at that restaurant in Asheville, the one with the wobbly table. She'd hunted three stores for it.

He turned then, saw the label, and made a face she'd known since they were twenty-six. "You remembered the wobbly table."

"I remembered you put a matchbook under it and it still wobbled."

They cooked around each other in the way of people who had negotiated the same eight square feet for over a decade. He seared the steaks; she made the salad she always made, too much lemon, the way he liked it. Somewhere in the middle she put on the record he'd given her their first Christmas together, and he groaned, because the second track had a skip and always had.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room. The good plates stayed in the cabinet. Outside, the rain kept up its steady noise against the window over the sink.

"I got you something," Marcus said, "but it's stupid."

"Everything you get me is stupid."

He handed her a small box. Inside was a matchbook, folded in half, from a restaurant in Asheville that had closed in 2019. He'd found it in a drawer while looking for batteries in March and had been sitting on it for four months.

Nadia laughed, and then didn't, and turned it over in her fingers a long moment.

"Twelve years," she said.

"Still wobbly."

"Still here."


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter and trying to remember whether they owned candles that weren't emergency candles.

By the time Danny came through the door at six-forty, she had found two tapers in a drawer, still wrapped in cellophane from someone's wedding, and set them in juice glasses because they didn't have holders.

"You're cooking?" he said.

"I'm boiling water. It's different."

He set down a paper bag and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Malbec they'd bought the first time they went to a liquor store together, back when buying wine had felt like an adult thing they were pretending to do. He'd had to go to three stores to find it.

"Oh, no," Marisol said, delighted. "That stuff is terrible."

"It was terrible then, too. That's the point."

Fifteen years. Not their wedding anniversary—that was in June—but the anniversary of the night she'd knocked on his apartment door in Providence at eleven-thirty with a duffel bag and no real plan, and he'd stepped aside and let her in. They'd never agreed which anniversary mattered more. They celebrated both.

Danny took over the sauce because Marisol had a habit of walking away from things on the stove. She sat on the counter beside him with her wine, swinging her heels lightly against the cabinet door, telling him about a woman at work who'd started bringing a parrot to Zoom meetings.

They ate at the small table by the window. The candles burned crooked. Somewhere around nine, Danny got up to put on a record and didn't sit back down; he held out a hand instead, and Marisol looked at him like he was ridiculous, and then took it.

The kitchen still smelled like garlic. Neither of them minded.


The Tenth Year

Dana got home first, which was unusual. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't buy anything. I mean it.* Marcus had circled "anything" in red pen and drawn a question mark.

She took off her coat and started the rice.

He came in at six-forty, carrying a paper bag that clearly contained a bottle of wine, which technically counted as something but which they had agreed, years ago, existed outside the rules.

"Ten years," he said, setting it down.

"Ten years since a courthouse and a sandwich."

"It was a good sandwich."

Dana laughed and handed him the cutting board. He'd gotten better at chopping over the decade — she remembered the first apartment, the way he'd hacked at an onion like it owed him money. Now he worked steadily, scraping garlic off the knife with his thumb, and she watched him for a second longer than she needed to.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Marcus poured the wine. Dana told him about the woman at work who'd cried over a spreadsheet. He told her about the dog he'd seen wearing sunglasses.

"Do you want to do the thing?" he asked, after.

The thing was a list. Every year, ten items, one for each year, things they'd want to remember. They'd started it as a joke in year three and now it was a legitimate ritual with a legitimate notebook.

Dana got up for a pen. Marcus stacked the plates in the sink and left them there, because it was an anniversary.

They sat on the couch. She wrote the first two. He argued about the third. Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped.

It took them an hour to get to ten.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into the steady drum that Marguerite liked best. She stood at the kitchen window with a dish towel over her shoulder, watching the gutters run.

"Twenty-two years," Dan said behind her. He was pulling the roasting pan out of the oven, chicken skin gone amber, the lemon halves collapsed underneath. "You want to eat in the dining room or on the couch?"

"Couch." She turned. "Dining room feels like we're waiting for someone else to show up."

He laughed at that. He'd been laughing more since he retired from the district in June, which was a relief; she'd braced for the opposite. He carved the bird right on the stovetop, sneaking a piece of the crispy part and burning his fingers, same as he did every time.

She poured the wine, a Rioja their daughter had sent from Chicago with a card that said *don't save it*. They'd saved it four months anyway. Now she pulled the cork and it came out clean, and she considered that a good omen.

They ate with the plates on their knees and the TV off. Dan told her about running into Ted Klosterman at the hardware store, how Ted had asked after her by her maiden name, which nobody had used since 1997. Marguerite told him she'd finally called about the gutters, actually called, and had a man coming Thursday.

"Look at us," he said. "Living."

Afterward she put on the record he'd given her the first Christmas, the Sam Cooke, which skipped in the same place it always had. They didn't dance. They sat with their shoulders touching and let it play through, and when the needle lifted, Dan said he'd get the coffee, and she said not yet, and they stayed where they were a while longer.


The Ninth Year

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat, I'm making the thing* — and realized she had no idea what the thing was going to be.

She settled on the mushroom pasta. It was the meal Peter had made for her the night they signed the lease on the apartment in Somerville, nine years ago, back when neither of them owned a colander and they'd drained the noodles with a dinner plate over the pot.

He came in at six-forty, smelling like the cold, carrying a paper bag he set down too carefully.

"You cooked," he said.

"I cooked badly. There's too much garlic."

"There's never too much garlic." He kissed the side of her head and went to change out of the button-down, and when he came back in his sweatshirt he took over the pan without asking, which she'd known he would, which was half the reason she'd started it.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the couch. Peter had brought home a bottle of the awful sweet wine they'd bought at a gas station in Vermont on their honeymoon; he'd found it at a liquor store in Watertown and it cost nine dollars and they both agreed it was terrible.

"To the plate-colander," Dana said.

"To the plate-colander."

Afterward she washed and he dried, and they argued mildly about whether the anniversary was technically the lease date or the wedding date, an argument they'd been having in some form for years and had no interest in resolving.

They fell asleep before ten, the dishes done, the television off, the radiator ticking in the corner of the bedroom the way it had every winter they'd lived there.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat, I'm cooking* — and felt a small satisfaction that Michael hadn't crossed it out with a rebuttal.

Twelve years. Not the wedding anniversary; that was in June, warm and public, with her sister always calling at nine sharp. This was the other one, the February night in the hospital parking garage in Cleveland when they'd sat in the car for forty minutes after her mother's surgery and decided, without exactly saying it, that they were going to stay.

She was searing the scallops when he came in, snow on his shoulders, holding a paper bag against his chest like something breakable.

"You cooked," he said.

"I said I would."

"You say a lot of things." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the terrible sweet wine they'd bought from a gas station that night because nothing else was open. "They still make it. I had to go to three places."

Dana laughed, which turned into something else halfway, and she pressed the back of her wrist to her eye and went on turning scallops.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Michael poured the wine into juice glasses. It was still terrible.

"To the parking garage," he said.

"To your mother's terrible directions to the parking garage."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they argued mildly about whether the movie they wanted was on one streaming service or another. They found it eventually. Halfway through, Dana fell asleep against his shoulder, and Michael, who had wanted to see the ending, didn't move.


The Reservation

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they'd meant to put a fruit bowl for three years, and decided against ordering delivery.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his sleeves, she had a pot of water going and the good olive oil out.

"I thought we had a reservation," he said.

"I canceled it." She didn't look up from the garlic. "Twenty-five dollars a plate to sit next to a table of drunk consultants. On a Tuesday."

Marcus set down the paper bag he'd been carrying. "Well. I got a cake."

"You got a cake."

"From the Lithuanian place. It's got, I don't know. Poppy seeds." He shrugged out of his jacket. "It seemed like a nine-year thing to do."

Nine years since the courthouse, four since they'd stopped pretending they'd throw a proper party for the fifth. She handed him a knife and the shallots without asking, and he took the cutting board to the other side of the sink the way he always did, so their elbows wouldn't collide.

"Do you remember what we ate that night?" she asked.

"Pizza. In the car. You had your dress hiked up over your knees because of the AC."

"It was so hot."

"It was disgusting out."

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt like effort, which was the point. Marcus told a long story about his brother's boat. Dana laughed in the right places and also in one wrong place, and he stopped and looked at her, and she waved him on.

Later he cut the cake badly, crumbling one side, and set the ruined slice in front of himself.

"To nine," she said, lifting a coffee mug of wine.

"To not going out," he said.

They clinked. The rain kept on.


The Reservation

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen holding her keys, listening to the refrigerator hum, and considered that she had forty minutes before Paul walked through the door. She could cook. She could also not cook, and they could go to the Vietnamese place on Locust like they'd planned back in March, before March got complicated.

She texted him: *Still want pho?*

Three dots, then: *I bought a chicken.*

She laughed out loud in the empty kitchen. Of course he had.

He came in at six twenty with a grocery bag and a bottle of wine he'd clearly agonized over, because he held it up like evidence. "The guy said it goes with roast chicken. I don't know if he was lying."

"He was definitely lying. That's his job."

"Fifteen years," Paul said, setting the bag down. "You'd think I'd have learned to cook by now."

"You can cook. You just narrate it too much."

He put the chicken in a pan and started narrating it. Dana peeled potatoes and let him. Outside, someone's dog was barking at the recycling bins, and the March complication—her mother's fall, the six weeks of driving to Harrisburg every weekend—sat in the room with them without needing to be mentioned. It had made this year long. It had also made them good at silence together, which was not nothing.

"Do you want to do the thing?" Paul asked, meaning the cards. They wrote each other a card every year and read them at the table.

"After," Dana said. "I want to eat first. I'm starving."

The chicken came out slightly dry. They ate it anyway, at the actual table, with the actual napkins, and Paul refilled her glass without asking, and she let him.


Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He set the grocery bag on the counter—two ribeyes, a bag of arugula, the good olive oil—and stood there a moment in the quiet kitchen of the house they'd bought four years ago in Tulsa, listening to the refrigerator hum.

Nine years since a bad first date at a chain restaurant on Memorial Drive. Neither of them had wanted a second one. They'd gone anyway.

By the time Ilse came in, shaking rain off her jacket, he had the cast iron heating and the radio on low.

"You're cooking," she said, not quite a question. She kicked off her shoes by the door, the way he'd asked her not to for nine years.

"I'm searing. There's a difference."

"There isn't." She washed her hands at the sink beside him, bumped his hip with hers. "I got us something."

"We said no gifts."

"You said no gifts. I nodded, which is different from agreeing."

She produced a bottle of wine from her bag—nothing extravagant, a Spanish red they'd liked at a friend's wedding in June and had failed to remember the name of ever since. Marcus turned it over, read the label, laughed.

"How did you find this?"

"I described it to a man at the liquor store for eleven minutes. He was very patient."

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room was full of boxes from her mother's house that neither of them was ready to open. The steaks were overdone on one side. Ilse ate hers anyway and said nothing, which he noticed, and which he decided was its own kind of gift.

Afterward they sat with the wine and the lights off, watching the rain sheet down the window over the sink.

"Bad first date," she said.

"Terrible."

She reached over and took his hand.


Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He set the grocery bag on the counter—two ribeyes, a bag of arugula, the expensive butter—and checked his phone. Dana had texted: *Leaving in ten. Don't start without me.*

He started without her, a little. He salted the steaks and left them on the counter to come to room temperature, the way she'd taught him years ago in the apartment on Wheeler Street, back when a fourteen-dollar steak felt like a wild indulgence. Eleven years since that first apartment. Nine since the courthouse wedding with her sister and his brother as witnesses, and a lunch afterward at a diner that had since closed.

Dana came in at six-forty, still in her work clothes, and dropped her bag by the door.

"You bought the good butter."

"I bought the good butter."

She kissed the side of his neck and went to change. When she came back in sweatpants and one of his old college T-shirts, he'd poured her a glass of the Malbec they'd been saving without ever deciding what they were saving it for.

They cooked together, which meant she ran the skillet and he made the salad and got in her way on purpose. The kitchen filled with smoke; the alarm went off; Dana waved a dish towel at it, laughing, and Marcus opened the back door to the November cold.

They ate at the small table instead of the couch. Dana asked if he remembered what they'd argued about the first year—something about a dishwasher, neither could recall the specifics—and Marcus said he mostly remembered being terrified she'd realize she could do better.

"I did realize," she said. "I stayed anyway."

Afterward, they left the dishes in the sink and watched half a movie. She fell asleep against his shoulder before the ending. He didn't wake her.