Marisol Ramírez finished the last of the Friday invoices at 4:40 and closed the laptop before anyone could email her something urgent. In the kitchen, Dave was already packing the cooler, arranging waters and the good grapes and the cheddar he insisted on buying in blocks instead of slices.

"Two nights," he said. "You said two nights."

"I said two nights and I meant two nights." She held up the small duffel as evidence. "Look at me. Restraint."

They had booked a cabin outside Hocking Hills three weeks earlier, mostly because Marisol had seen a photograph of a porch with two rocking chairs on it and felt something in her chest go quiet. It cost more than they usually spent on a weekend, but their daughter was at college in Cincinnati now and the house on Fridays had begun to feel less like peace and more like an echo.

Dave drove the first hour. Marisol read the directions out loud twice, then put her phone face-down in the cup holder, which was, in its way, the whole point of the trip.

"Did you turn off the water heater?" she asked, near Lancaster.

"No, why would I turn off the water heater?"

"I don't know. My father always did."

"Your father also unplugged the toaster."

They stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign for boiled peanuts, and Dave bought a bag and ate them for twenty miles while Marisol described, in detail, the smell. They argued about a song on the radio. They agreed, without discussing it, not to talk about the roof estimate.

The cabin was down a gravel road, harder to find in the dark than the listing suggested. Inside it smelled like cedar and old smoke. Dave carried in the cooler; Marisol found the light switches one by one.

The porch had two rocking chairs. They sat in them.


Marisol pulled the suitcase down from the closet shelf while Danny stood in the kitchen doorway, reading aloud from his phone.

"Two hours and forty minutes if we leave before four," he said. "Three and a half if we wait until five."

"Then we leave before four."

They had been talking about the lake cabin since February, when Danny's cousin mentioned it was sitting empty most weekends. Now it was October, the maples along their street had gone the color of pennies, and Marisol had finally traded a Saturday shift with Renata at the clinic.

She packed the way she always did—too many sweaters, one book she wouldn't open. Danny packed the way he always did, which was to say twenty minutes before departure, throwing socks into a duffel bag and asking whether the cabin had towels.

"Your cousin said it does."

"My cousin said a lot of things."

He brought towels.

The dog went to the neighbor's. The thermostat went down to sixty. Marisol walked through the house twice, checking the stove she hadn't used since breakfast, while Danny idled the car in the driveway with the passenger door hanging open like an invitation.

They made it out at 3:48. The highway thinned as they went north, strip malls giving way to fields, then to trees pressing close on both sides. Danny drove. Marisol found a radio station that faded out after forty miles and didn't bother finding another.

Somewhere past the second exit she said, "We should do this more."

"We say that every time."

"I know."

He reached over and put his hand on her knee, and she put her hand on top of his, and neither of them said anything for a while. The light went gold, then amber, then gone. When they turned onto the gravel road, the headlights caught the water first—flat and black between the pines—and Marisol sat forward in her seat.


Marisol had the cooler packed by six-fifteen, which was a small miracle considering she'd worked until nine the night before. Deviled eggs, two sleeves of saltines, a six-pack of Topo Chico, and the leftover pernil wrapped in foil.

"You're bringing the pernil?" Danny asked from the doorway, holding two travel mugs.

"It'll go bad if we leave it. Three days is three days."

He didn't argue. He'd learned somewhere around year eleven that arguing about food was a losing proposition. Instead he took the cooler out to the Equinox, wedged it behind the driver's seat where it wouldn't slide, and came back for the duffel bag they'd been sharing since their honeymoon in Galveston.

The plan was modest: two nights at a cabin outside Broken Bow, booked with a coupon code Marisol found on a Facebook group. They'd talked about doing something bigger — the Grand Canyon, maybe a cruise — but Danny's hours at the plant had been cut back in February, and Marisol's mother needed help with the property taxes again. So Broken Bow it was. Four hours and change, mostly on the Indian Nation Turnpike.

"Did you text Elena?" Danny asked.

"She's got the key. She's feeding the cat and she's not throwing a party."

"She's twenty-two."

"She's not throwing a party."

They pulled out at seven-oh-two. Danny drove the first leg because he always drove the first leg. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated and never mentioned, and scrolled through a playlist she'd made specifically for this — mostly Selena, some Tom Petty for him.

Around Atoka she fell asleep against the window. Danny turned the music down and drove on through the flat green morning, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her knee, thinking that this was fine. This was actually pretty good.


The forecast said clear skies through Sunday, so Ray printed the route at the library and folded it into his shirt pocket. Dolores had already decided they would leave after breakfast Saturday, not before, because she wasn't going to drive two hours on an empty stomach again.

"Three nights or two?" he asked, standing in the hallway with the duffel bag he'd owned since 1994.

"Two. Marisol's coming Monday to look at the water heater, and I'm not rescheduling her a third time."

They packed the way they'd packed for thirty-one years: Dolores laid everything on the bed first, counted it, then put it in the bag. Ray carried things out to the car in whatever order they reached his hands and came back for the cooler twice because he'd forgotten the ice.

The place they'd rented was a cabin outside a town neither of them had visited, chosen because it was cheap in October and had a photograph of a porch. Dolores had read the reviews aloud over dinner Thursday. Ray had said the reviews didn't matter as long as the bed was decent, and she'd told him that was exactly the kind of thinking that got them the motel in Barstow.

Saturday morning she made eggs and he washed the pan, and by nine-forty they were on the highway with the windows cracked. He drove the first hour. She read him the names of towns off the exit signs and he made up facts about each one, most of them involving a famous mule.

They stopped at a fruit stand around the halfway point and bought apples they didn't need. Dolores took a photograph of Ray holding the bag, squinting, and he complained about it, and she kept the picture anyway.

The cabin porch faced west. They agreed, arriving, that the photograph hadn't done it justice.


Marisol and Dave Renteria had been talking about the cabin for two years, and on a Tuesday in September, Marisol finally booked it — two nights, a place near the lake with a woodstove and questionable Wi-Fi.

"Friday after work," she said, showing him the confirmation on her phone. "We can be there by seven if you don't get stuck on a call."

Dave squinted at the screen over his reading glasses. "Is there cell service?"

"Enough."

He had opinions about the route. She had opinions about his opinions. They settled it the way they settled most things, by each doing what they wanted and comparing results later: he printed directions, she trusted her phone.

Thursday night, the packing began in earnest. Marisol laid out clothes on the bed in two neat stacks and then added a third stack of things she called "just in case." Dave carried in the cooler from the garage and filled it with beer, cheese, and a package of hot dogs, then stood looking at it as if he'd forgotten something important.

"Coffee," she said from the hallway.

"I was getting to coffee."

Friday afternoon, he left work twenty minutes early, which she noticed and did not comment on. They loaded the car in the driveway, and the neighbor's dog watched from behind a fence. Marisol went back inside twice — once for the phone charger, once for a reason she wouldn't disclose.

They pulled out at 4:50. Dave drove. Marisol put her feet on the dash, then took them down when he glanced over.

The highway thinned out past the county line. She found a station playing old country and left it there, and after a while he started humming along, badly, on purpose. She laughed. The light went gold across the fields, and neither of them said anything for six or seven miles, which was fine.


Marisol pulled the suitcase from the closet shelf while Danny checked the oil in the Corolla. They had two days—Saturday and Sunday—and a cousin's cabin two hours north, offered for free because the cousin was visiting his in-laws.

"I already packed the coffee," Marisol called through the window. "The good kind, not the instant."

Danny wiped his hands on a rag. He was forty-four and had learned that the difference between a good trip and a bad one was whether the car made it. The Corolla had 160,000 miles and a rattle he'd been ignoring since March. He topped off the washer fluid, checked the spare, and decided the rattle could wait until Monday.

Inside, Marisol was arguing with herself over whether to bring the slow cooker. It seemed absurd for two nights. She brought it anyway, along with a bag of dried beans, an onion, and a chunk of pork shoulder that had been on sale. Danny liked her beans better than anything at a restaurant, and restaurants up there were forty dollars for two plates and a lie about the fish being fresh.

They left at 6:40 Saturday morning to beat the traffic. Danny drove the first hour; Marisol read aloud from a list of things they might do—a hiking trail, a farmers market, a lookout point with a name she couldn't pronounce.

"We could just sit," Danny said.

"We can sit at home."

"Not without the neighbors' dog."

She laughed and put the list down. At the gas station outside Hartwell they split a bag of sunflower seeds and she took the wheel. The road narrowed. Pines came up on both sides like a held breath.

By nine they were unlocking the cabin door, and Marisol was already running water into the pot for the beans, and Danny was standing on the porch, listening to nothing at all.


The Ortegas had been talking about the lake since March, and by the second week of September, Denise finally put it on the calendar in pen.

"Two nights," she said, standing at the kitchen counter with her phone. "We leave Friday after you close up."

Rafael was rinsing a coffee mug. He was fifty-three, worked as a maintenance supervisor at a distribution center, and hadn't taken more than a single day off since the spring. "Two nights is enough. Three and I start thinking about the yard."

They found a cabin about two hours north — small, brown, a picture of a dock that looked older than the listing. Denise read the reviews out loud while Rafael made a list on the back of an envelope: cooler, folding chairs, the good flashlight, the bug spray from the garage that might have expired. She added coffee, because the reviews mentioned there wasn't a pot.

Friday came humid and gray. Rafael got home at 5:40, still in his work boots, and Denise had the car half-loaded — she'd carried out the cooler herself, which he noticed and didn't comment on, only shifted it so the lid would sit flat. Their daughter had texted twice about whether they'd remembered the charger. They had not. Denise went back in for it.

They stopped for gas outside town, and Rafael bought two coffees and a bag of pretzels without asking, because he knew. Denise drove the first stretch while he dozed with his head against the window, waking once to say something about the transmission that she ignored.

The last twenty minutes were on a county road with no shoulder, the pines going black on either side. When they pulled in, the cabin's porch light was on for them, one moth already working at it.

"Smells like water," Denise said, getting out.

Rafael stretched, listened, and started unloading.


Marisol had the cooler packed by six on Friday evening, though Dev insisted they wouldn't need that much ice for two nights. He carried it to the car anyway, wedging it behind the driver's seat next to the duffel bag they'd shared since their honeymoon eleven years ago.

"Did you text your mother?" he asked, coming back in for the pillows.

"I told her Tuesday. She's picking up the mail Saturday and Sunday." Marisol stood in the kitchen doorway, doing the mental inventory she always did: stove off, coffee maker unplugged, back door locked, thermostat bumped up four degrees. "The Hendersons said they'd watch for packages."

They were driving to a cabin three hours north, one Dev's coworker had recommended. Not fancy—a wood stove, a screened porch, a lake close enough to hear. Marisol had wanted the ocean, but October rates near the coast were still absurd, and this was a hundred and forty a night with the cleaning fee included.

The traffic thinned once they were past the exurbs. Dev drove with one hand and ate the almonds Marisol fed him from a paper cup. She read the arrival instructions aloud twice, because the lockbox code had a letter in it and she didn't trust either of them to remember.

"We could stop in that town with the diner," Dev said. "The one with the pie."

"That was a different highway."

"There'll be pie somewhere."

They found a gas station with mediocre coffee instead, and stood in the cold under the fluorescent canopy, breathing steam, not saying much. Marisol leaned against him. He put his arm around her shoulders and they watched a truck pull out.

By nine-thirty they were on the gravel drive, headlights swinging across pine trunks. Dev worked the lockbox while Marisol shone her phone flashlight. Inside, the cabin smelled like cedar and old smoke, and the stove was already laid with kindling, waiting.


The Reyeses had been talking about Galena for three years, ever since Marisol's sister sent a postcard from there with a picture of a brick main street and hills going gold in October.

On Thursday night, Danny cleared the kitchen table and set down his laptop. "Two nights," he said. "Friday after work, back Sunday evening. Anything more and the dog situation gets complicated."

Marisol was rinsing a pot. "Your mother will take Biscuit."

"My mother will take Biscuit and then tell me for a month that he's too heavy."

"He is too heavy."

They found a place with a wraparound porch for a hundred and forty a night, which felt like a lot until Danny pointed out they hadn't been anywhere since his cousin's wedding. Marisol wrote a list on the back of an envelope: coffee, the good sneakers, the jacket with the hood, ibuprofen. She was forty-six and had learned to bring ibuprofen.

Friday they left at ten past five, which was later than planned because Danny couldn't find the phone charger, and then found it in the car, where it had been the whole time. Marisol drove the first hour. The interstate emptied out west of the suburbs and the land started doing things — rising, folding, showing off barns.

"I forgot how flat where we live is," Danny said.

"You say that every time we leave."

"Because it's true every time."

They stopped at a gas station outside Rockford and split a bag of pretzels neither of them wanted, standing by the trunk in the cold, and Marisol laughed at something on her phone and showed him, and he didn't think it was funny but he laughed anyway because she was.

They got in at nine. The porch light was on for them. Danny carried both bags, and Marisol went ahead to find the lockbox, her breath showing white in the dark.


Marisol woke before the alarm, the way she always did the morning of a trip. Outside, the pickup sat in the driveway with a thin skin of frost on the windshield. She let the coffee maker do its work while she checked the cooler: sandwiches, two apples, a bag of pretzels, the thermos.

"You packed the good pillow?" Dave asked from the hallway, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. Fifty-three years old and still built like the linebacker he'd been for exactly one season in high school.

"I packed both pillows. You'll steal mine anyway."

They were driving three hours north to a cabin his cousin rented out cheap in the off-season. Two nights. Marisol had the days marked on the kitchen calendar in green pen since August, and twice they'd almost canceled — once for the water heater, once because Dave's shift got moved. This time the calendar held.

He scraped the windshield while she locked up, checking the stove twice, the way her mother used to. The neighbor's dog barked at them through a chain-link fence. By seven-fifteen they were on the highway with the heat cranked and the radio tuned to a classic rock station that would fade out somewhere around the county line.

Marisol read aloud from her phone: a diner in the town before the lake, four and a half stars, famous for pie. Dave said he'd stop if she didn't mention the pie again for at least an hour. She mentioned it four minutes later.

Around nine the trees thickened, and the road began to rise and curve. Dave rolled his window down an inch just to smell the cold. Marisol put her hand on his knee and left it there, watching the guardrails slide past, thinking that they should do this more often, and knowing, comfortably, that they probably wouldn't.


Marisol woke before the alarm, which was unusual. Normally Dev was the early one, standing at the counter with his coffee, scrolling through weather reports for places they weren't going.

"Two hours to Galena," he said when she came into the kitchen. "Maybe two and a half with traffic on the interstate."

"You've been researching."

"I've been *thinking*." He turned the laptop toward her. A bed-and-breakfast with a wraparound porch, $140 a night, a photograph of a breakfast table crowded with fruit and pastry. "Saturday and Sunday. Back before Monday, obviously."

She had been the one to bring it up, three weeks ago, over dishes: that they hadn't gone anywhere since her mother's funeral, that the house had started to feel like a waiting room. He hadn't answered then. She'd assumed that was that. Instead he'd been saving links.

They packed Friday night with the efficiency of people who had done this for nineteen years. She rolled shirts; he insisted on folding. She packed the good coffee because motel coffee was a crime against the morning. He packed a paperback he wouldn't read and the small blue cooler with sandwiches, because stopping at a chain restaurant felt like admitting defeat.

Saturday morning was gray and cool. Dev backed the Corolla out while Marisol locked the door twice, then checked it a third time.

"You did lock it," he said as she got in.

"I know what I did."

The first twenty minutes were quiet, the good kind. Suburbs thinned into cornfields still stubbled from harvest. She put her feet on the dashboard, which he hated, and he said nothing, which she noticed.

"There's a place with a bridge," he said finally. "A pedestrian bridge over the river. I thought we could walk it."

"Okay," Marisol said, and reached over, and put her hand on his knee, and left it there.


Marisol had the cooler packed by six on Friday evening, though Dev was still upstairs deciding whether two shirts or three was the right number for two nights. She heard him open and close the closet twice.

"Bring the gray one," she called. "It's supposed to rain Saturday."

They'd chosen the cabin because it was ninety minutes north and cost less than a nice dinner in the city. Dev had found it three weeks ago, scrolling on his phone while the pasta water came to a boil, and had turned the screen toward her without comment. She'd looked at the photo of the porch, the two chairs, the trees, and said, "Book it."

Now he came down with a duffel and the gray shirt on top. Marisol had already loaded the car: cooler, tote bag, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March. He added his bag and a bag of coffee beans, because the cabin listing mentioned a grinder and he did not trust strangers' coffee.

"Did you text your mother?" he asked.

"I told her we'd be back Sunday. She wants to know if there's cell service."

"Is there?"

"Apparently not much."

Dev considered this and decided he was pleased. He backed out of the driveway while Marisol adjusted the vents and found a station that came in clear. Traffic thickened at the interchange, then loosened, and by the time they crossed the county line the light had gone gold and low across the fields.

They stopped once for gas and bad pretzels. Marisol drove the last stretch, watching for the turnoff Dev read aloud from a printout he'd made because of the cell service. The gravel road came up faster than expected. She braked, turned, and the trees closed in behind them.

The porch was smaller than the photo. Neither of them minded.


Marisol Duarte-Whitfield had the cooler packed by Thursday night, which Ben found both admirable and slightly alarming.

"It's two days," he said, leaning against the kitchen doorway. "Not a expedition."

"Two days without gas station sandwiches." She wedged a container of cut melon between the sodas. "You'll thank me somewhere around Bakersfield."

They were driving up to Cambria, a stretch of coast Ben had talked about since a work trip three years ago—cliffs, elephant seals, a motel with a fireplace and questionable wallpaper. Marisol had finally cleared a Saturday. Her clinic scheduled her six weeks out, and she'd traded a shift with Priya to get it.

Friday evening they left late, of course. Ben got stuck on a call with a subcontractor who couldn't understand why the framing inspection mattered. By the time they merged onto the 101, the sun was already going orange over the hills, and Marisol had her feet up on the dash in a way he'd stopped objecting to around year four of the marriage.

"Playlist or podcast?" she asked.

"You pick. But nothing about murders."

"Everything good is about murders."

She picked music—old Selena, then some Fleetwood Mac, then a stretch of silence where neither of them felt the need to fill it. Ben drove with one hand and rested the other on her knee. Outside Paso Robles the vineyards went gray-purple and the air through the cracked window smelled like dust and something green.

They stopped for gas in Templeton. Marisol went in for coffee and came back with coffee, a bag of gummy worms, and a keychain shaped like an artichoke.

"Why," Ben said.

"Because it's ridiculous."

He clipped it to the rearview mirror, where it swung the rest of the way, catching headlights, while the road unspooled toward the ocean they couldn't see yet but could already feel—cooler air, that faint salt shift—forty minutes out.


Marisol and Trent had circled the weekend in September for two months, mostly because it was the only one where neither of them was scheduled to work.

The planning happened at the kitchen table on a Wednesday night, between loads of laundry. Trent pulled up a map on his phone and argued for the lake, three hours north, where his cousin had a cabin they could use for free. Marisol wanted the coast — she hadn't smelled salt air since before the twins were born, and the twins were eleven now. They compromised the way they usually did, which is to say Trent said "the lake's free" and Marisol said "fine, but I'm not cooking," and that was that.

She made a list on the back of an envelope: towels, coffee, the good pillow, bug spray, the folding chairs from the garage that still had last summer's sand in the joints. Trent checked the tire pressure on the Corolla and discovered the rear passenger tire was low, which cost him forty minutes and a trip to the gas station on Route 9.

Friday afternoon they left later than intended. The kids stayed with Marisol's mother, who accepted them with the resigned dignity of a woman who had expected the call. On the highway, Marisol read aloud from a paperback she'd found in the church donation box while Trent drove with one hand and ate pretzels with the other.

They stopped at a diner outside Milford because Marisol said she was starving and Trent said he could eat. She got the patty melt. He got eggs, at four in the afternoon, which she teased him about.

By the time they reached the cabin, the light was going orange over the water. Trent carried the cooler. Marisol found the key under the ceramic frog, exactly where his cousin said it would be, and pushed the door open.


The Delgados had been talking about the lake for three years, and on Thursday night Rosa finally printed the reservation confirmation and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a chili pepper.

"Two nights," she said. "Saturday and Sunday. We're back before your Monday shift."

Miguel looked up from the kitchen table, where he was reading the weather on his phone. "Rain Saturday morning. Clears by noon."

"Then we leave at noon."

"Then we leave at ten and drive through it."

She laughed, because she'd known he'd say that. He hated arriving anywhere in daylight's last hour, hated the feeling of unpacking in the dark. They had been married nineteen years and their arguments had worn down into something closer to a call-and-response.

Friday evening they packed. Rosa made a list on the back of an envelope: coffee, the good pillow, her library book, the sweatshirt Miguel always ended up wearing. He carried the cooler up from the basement, wiped out a dead spider, and filled it with ice from the machine at the gas station because their freezer's ice tasted like onions.

"Did you tell Marisol we're going?" he asked.

"I texted her. She said have fun and don't call her at seven in the morning."

They left at ten-fifteen, which Miguel counted as a victory. The rain came hard through the first county, and Rosa turned the radio down instead of up, the way she always did when the windshield went blurry, as if quiet helped him see. Somewhere past the second exit the clouds thinned and the road turned wet-bright, and she found a station playing music from before they met.

The cabin had a screened porch and a smell of cedar and old smoke. Miguel carried the cooler in. Rosa stood on the steps a moment, looking at the gray water, and decided the drive had been worth the argument.


The Ordinary Miracle of Saturday

Denise had the map open on the kitchen table, the paper kind, because she liked the way distances looked when you could put your thumb across them. "Two hours and forty minutes," she said. "If we leave by nine."

Robert was rinsing the coffee pot. "If we leave by nine, we hit that construction outside Chillicothe."

"Then eight-thirty."

"Then eight-thirty," he agreed, and set the pot upside down in the rack.

They had been talking about the cabin since February, mostly as a thing to mention when the week got long. Denise's cousin owned it and had offered it for free, which somehow made it harder to actually go — free things sat around waiting, unhurried. But the calendar had opened up. Their daughter was at her friend's for the weekend. Nothing was scheduled that couldn't be unscheduled.

Friday night, Denise packed while Robert pretended to help. She put in two sweatshirts, the good flashlight, a deck of cards with the four of hearts missing. He put in a bag of coffee and, secretly, the box of powdered doughnuts she'd said they didn't need.

They left at 8:52.

The first forty minutes were quiet in the way of long marriages, not empty. Robert drove. Denise watched the subdivisions thin out into fields and then into low hills the color of a wet penny. Somewhere past the county line she found a radio station playing songs from before either of them had a mortgage, and she turned it up without asking, and he didn't complain.

"We should do this more," she said.

"We say that every time."

"We do it sometimes."

He reached over and put his hand on her knee, and left it there, steering with the other, and the road bent north into the trees.


Marisol counted the folded shirts twice before zipping the duffel bag. Two nights in Galveston, one bag between them — she had insisted, and Dan had agreed the way he agreed to most logistics, with a nod and a mental note to sneak his fishing rod into the trunk anyway.

"Did you call Iris?" he asked from the kitchen, rinsing the coffee pot.

"She's got the key. She'll water the tomatoes and feed the cat." Marisol appeared in the doorway holding two sun hats, one of which was clearly his. "You're wearing this. Your ears burned last time and you complained for a week."

"I did not complain for a week."

"Four days. I rounded."

They left at seven-fifteen, later than Dan wanted and earlier than Marisol thought was humane. The interstate was already thick with trucks. She had made a playlist — mostly songs from the years before their daughter was born, when they had lived in a duplex with a broken window unit — and Dan let it play without commentary, which was his version of enthusiasm.

Somewhere past Rosenberg they stopped for kolaches and coffee. Marisol paid. Dan pumped the gas and cleaned the windshield with the squeegee, working at a spot that turned out to be a chip in the glass.

"We should get that fixed."

"Monday," she said, handing him a napkin. "Not this weekend."

The motel was two blocks from the seawall, cheaper than the places facing the water, and the room smelled faintly of bleach and salt. Marisol unpacked into the dresser drawers because she couldn't stand living out of a bag. Dan opened the curtains, then the window, and stood listening.

"You can hear it," he said.

She came and stood beside him. They didn't say anything for a while. Then she asked if he'd brought the rod, and he said yes, and she said she'd known that all along.


Marisol counted the cash in the coffee tin twice before she said anything.

"Two hundred and twelve," she told Dwayne, who was at the kitchen table with the laptop, squinting at gas prices. "Plus whatever's left on the card."

"That's enough for the cabin," he said. "It's ninety-four a night, and we'd only stay the one."

They had been talking about the lake since March, the way people talk about things they don't expect to do. But Marisol's sister had offered to take the dog, and Dwayne's shift got covered, and suddenly the weekend was just sitting there, open.

She packed while he changed the oil in the driveway. She was practical about it — two towels, the good pillow because he couldn't sleep without it, a grocery bag of sandwiches so they wouldn't stop anywhere expensive. She threw in the deck of cards with the missing seven of clubs.

Dwayne came in with grease on his knuckles and looked at the bags by the door.

"You packed light."

"It's one night."

"I know. I'm saying it approvingly." He kissed the side of her head and went to wash his hands.

They left at six thirty Saturday morning to beat the heat. Marisol drove the first stretch because Dwayne liked to look out the window in the early part of a trip, and she liked to be the one who got them out of the city. He put on the radio, then turned it down, then off.

"Quiet's fine," he said.

The highway opened up past the county line. Fog lay in the low fields like something spilled. Marisol adjusted the visor and felt, briefly and without warning, entirely unhurried.

"Two hours," Dwayne said, checking the phone.

"Two hours," she agreed, and neither of them said anything else for a while.


Marisol checked the tire pressure on the Corolla while Dave packed the cooler with sandwiches, two apples, and the good mustard he refused to travel without.

They had settled on Galveston because it was three hours away and because Marisol's sister had offered her condo for free, which made the whole thing possible. Dave's hours at the distribution center had been cut back in September, and Marisol's job at the dental office didn't include paid time off, so the weekend had required arithmetic. They'd decided gas and one dinner out was manageable. Breakfast would be the granola bars in the glove compartment.

"Did you bring the thing for your knee?" Marisol asked.

"The brace is in the bag."

"The bag or your bag?"

Dave went back inside. She heard the screen door slap twice.

They left at 6:40 Saturday morning, earlier than planned, because Dave woke at five out of habit and couldn't get back to sleep. Marisol drove the first leg. The sun came up somewhere past Rosenberg, throwing long orange bars across the highway, and she reached over and put her hand on his leg without looking away from the road.

They talked about their daughter Anna, who was twenty-six and living in Denver and had not called in eleven days. They talked about whether the roof could make it another winter. Then they stopped talking and let the radio handle it, and that was fine too, after twenty-nine years.

At the seawall Dave got out and stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at the brown Gulf water. Marisol took a picture of him from behind because he hated posing.

"It's cold," he said.

"It's February."

"I'm just saying."

They walked down to the sand anyway. She held his arm on the steps. The wind pulled her hair loose, and neither of them mentioned going back to the car.


Marisol had the cooler packed by six-forty, which was earlier than Dev expected, and he said so while pulling on his shoes in the hallway.

"You said seven," he said.

"I said around seven. Around is a wide word." She wedged a bag of oranges beside the sandwiches and closed the lid with her hip.

They were driving to Galena, two and a half hours northwest, because Dev's cousin had mentioned a hotel with a hot tub and Marisol had not left the county since March. The plan had assembled itself over three weeks of texts and one long argument about whether it was worth spending the money in October when the furnace would need servicing. Marisol had won by pointing out that they had spent more on a single vet visit for the dog and gotten less out of it.

The dog was going to Dev's sister's. That was the first stop. Roscoe rode in the back seat with his chin on the armrest, breathing on Marisol's shoulder while she read directions off her phone even though the car knew the way.

"You don't have to navigate," Dev said.

"I like knowing."

At his sister's they stayed twenty minutes, longer than intended, because his sister wanted to show them the bathroom tile. Marisol admired it sincerely. Dev checked his watch twice and was caught doing it once.

Back on the highway, the corn had already been cut, and the fields ran flat and pale to the treelines. Marisol put her feet on the dash, then took them down because Dev hated that, then put them back up when he laughed.

Somewhere past Rockford she said, "We should do this more."

"We say that every time."

"I know," she said. "I'm saying it again anyway."

He reached over and put his hand on her knee, and left it there for a while, and neither of them said anything else until the exit.


The Ortegas had been talking about the lake for three years, and on a Thursday in October, Denise finally booked the cabin.

"Two nights," she told Raúl over dinner. "We leave Friday after you get off."

He worked maintenance for the county, and Friday shifts ran long. But he nodded, already calculating: gas, the tire that needed air, whether the cooler was still in the garage or had migrated to their daughter's apartment across town.

Denise made lists. She was a school secretary and could not help herself. Coffee, filters, the good mugs because the cabins never had good mugs. Her reading glasses, two paperbacks, the heating pad for her shoulder. Raúl packed by opening a duffel and putting things in it until it seemed full.

"Did you call your mother?" he asked.

"I told her Wednesday. She acted like we were moving to Alaska."

Friday came gray and cool. Raúl got home at 5:40, showered in nine minutes, and found Denise standing in the kitchen holding a bag of oranges, deciding.

"Bring them," he said.

The drive was two and a half hours, most of it interstate, then a state highway that narrowed and began to bend. Denise drove the first half while Raúl dozed with his head against the window, and when he woke they traded at a gas station where she bought sunflower seeds and he bought a coffee he didn't finish.

They found the cabin at dusk. It was smaller than the photos, which they'd expected, and smelled faintly of woodsmoke, which they hadn't. Raúl carried in the cooler. Denise opened windows.

Later they sat on the porch with the oranges and a bottle of wine she'd remembered at the last second. The lake was invisible in the dark but audible, small sounds against the shore.

"Two whole days," Denise said.

"One and a half," Raúl said, and she elbowed him, and they stayed out until the cold moved them in.


Marisol and Dan had been talking about the cabin for three years, and on a Thursday in October, Marisol finally booked it — two nights, a wood stove, a lake that would be too cold for swimming.

Dan came home from his shift at the distribution center and found her at the kitchen table with a legal pad, writing lists in her small, decisive handwriting. Coffee. Eggs. That good bread from the Guatemalan bakery on Twelfth. Firewood, unless the place provided it.

"It provides it," he said, reading over her shoulder. "I called."

"You called?"

"I wanted to know if there was cell service. There isn't, much."

She looked up at him. Twenty-two years, and she still checked his face when he said things like that, to see whether he meant it as a warning or an invitation. He was smiling.

Friday morning they packed the Corolla, which had 190,000 miles and a rattle in the dash that Dan had stopped apologizing for. Marisol brought too many blankets. Dan brought a fishing rod he hadn't used since his father died, and when she raised an eyebrow he shrugged and said, "It's small. It fits."

They stopped for gas outside Marshalltown and split a bag of pretzels. Marisol drove the second half because Dan's eyes got tired in the afternoon glare now, a thing neither of them named directly. She played a podcast about a 1970s bank robbery; he fell asleep twenty minutes in, head against the window, and she let him.

The cabin was smaller than the photos and smelled like cedar and mouse. Dan got the stove going on the second try. Marisol stood on the porch with her jacket zipped to her chin, watching the lake go pewter in the last light, and when he came out and stood beside her, neither of them said anything for a while.


Marisol and Dev had been meaning to see the coast since March, and by October the intention had calcified into something like guilt. So on a Thursday night, standing in the kitchen with a calendar app open on her phone, Marisol said, "Two nights. We leave Friday after your shift."

Dev didn't argue. He'd worked eleven days straight at the distribution center and the idea of not hearing a forklift alarm for forty-eight hours sounded medicinal. He pulled up a map on the tablet while she scrolled listings. They landed on a motel forty minutes north of the shoreline, seventy-two dollars a night, a place with a gravel lot and a hand-painted sign in the photos. "It has a coffee maker," Dev said, as if that settled it. It did.

Packing took twenty minutes because they'd learned years ago not to overthink it. Marisol threw in two sweatshirts, knowing Dev would forget his and take hers. Dev filled a cooler with sandwiches, a bag of pretzels, and four beers, then added a fifth because the arrangement looked unbalanced. They asked their neighbor Renata to bring in the mail and check the thermostat.

Friday, Dev got home at 4:40, showered in six minutes, and found Marisol already in the passenger seat with the seat belt on and her sunglasses pushed up into her hair. "Aggressive," he said.

"Motivated," she said.

Traffic was ugly for the first hour, then loosened. They ate the sandwiches somewhere around mile ninety, crumbs everywhere, arguing amiably about whether the podcast host was insufferable or merely confident. The sky went orange, then bruised, then dark. Marisol drove the last stretch while Dev dozed with his head against the window.

The motel's office smelled like cedar and Windex. The clerk gave them room 14, and when Dev opened the door, they could hear it faintly — not the ocean yet, but wind moving through something wide and open.


Marcus checked the oil in the Corolla while Denise packed the cooler, because paying gas-station prices for water was a thing neither of them was willing to do.

They had settled on Chattanooga. It was three and a half hours away, the hotel had a pool their daughter could exhaust herself in, and Denise's cousin lived close enough to meet for lunch on Saturday without anybody having to sleep on a couch. Marcus had floated Nashville, but Denise ran the numbers out loud at the kitchen table on Wednesday night — parking, the two nights, what they'd inevitably spend downtown — and Nashville quietly disappeared from the conversation.

"Did you print the confirmation?" she asked.

"It's on my phone."

"Print it."

He printed it. Fourteen years in, he had learned which arguments were worth the eleven cents.

They left Friday at 4:40, later than planned, which Marcus had privately expected and had padded the estimate for. Denise drove the first leg. Their daughter, eleven and headphoned, occupied the back seat with a tablet and a bag of pretzels, and for forty minutes the adults talked about things they never got around to on weeknights — his brother's new job, the neighbor's fence, whether the water heater could survive another winter.

Somewhere past the state line the sun dropped low and orange in the mirrors and Denise turned the radio down without being asked, and Marcus, who had been half-composing a work email in his head, let it go.

They stopped once, for gas and a bathroom. Denise bought a coffee she didn't need. Marcus took over driving and got them into the hotel lot by 8:15.

The room smelled like carpet cleaner. Their daughter claimed the bed by the window. Denise kicked off her shoes, sat down on the edge of the mattress, and said, "Okay. That wasn't bad."


Marisol and Dave had been talking about the cabin for two years, and on Thursday night Marisol finally opened the browser and booked it — two nights, one bedroom, a woodstove, ninety minutes north.

"It's not refundable," she said, turning the laptop toward him.

Dave looked up from the sink, hands soapy. "Then I guess we're going."

They packed Friday after work, which was to say Marisol packed and Dave carried things to the car. She laid out sweaters on the bed and reconsidered half of them. He found the good flashlight in the garage, tested it, and put fresh batteries in anyway. Their daughter was staying with friends; their son had texted from his apartment that he'd water the plants, which meant he probably wouldn't, and Marisol watered everything twice before bed.

Saturday morning they left at seven. Dave drove the first stretch, coffee in the cupholder, radio low on a station that faded out past the county line. Marisol read road signs aloud in a tour-guide voice until he laughed. They stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign advertising boiled peanuts, and she bought a bag, and he said he wouldn't have any, and then he had most of them.

The last five miles were gravel. The cabin was smaller than the photos suggested, the porch sagging a little at one end, but the woodstove worked and there was a view of the ridge through bare trees.

Marisol stood in the doorway with her bag still on her shoulder. "It's not fancy."

"It's quiet," Dave said. He set the cooler down and went to look at the stove, crouching, opening the flue the way his father had taught him.

She dropped the bag. Outside, wind moved through the pines, and neither of them said anything for a while, and it was fine.


Saturday morning fog still clung to the yard when Denise Okonkwo carried the last bag out to the Corolla. Ray was already in the driver's seat, adjusting the mirror he never needed to adjust, the way he did whenever he was pretending not to be excited.

"You packed the cooler?" he asked.

"I packed the cooler, the sandwiches, the thermos, and your allergy medicine, because you'd forget your own head."

They had planned this for three weeks, mostly at the kitchen table on Tuesday nights, a road atlas open beside the electric bill. Two nights at a cabin outside Hocking Hills — cheaper in October, and Ray's cousin knew the owner. Denise had wanted a hotel with a real shower. Ray had argued for the cabin because of the porch, and because he wanted, just once, to hear nothing but bugs.

The drive took three hours. Denise controlled the radio, which meant gospel for the first hour, then a country station that faded into static somewhere past Lancaster. Ray drove with one hand and pointed out barns he liked. Twice they discussed whether they'd left the porch light on. Twice they concluded they had, probably.

The cabin was smaller than the photographs, which surprised no one. The bed sagged in the middle. There was a wood stove and a stack of split oak and a hand-lettered sign explaining how to work the damper.

Denise unpacked while Ray walked the perimeter, checking things — the water heater, the gravel lane, the tree line. Habit from thirty-one years of owning a house.

By five they were on the porch with paper plates. The air smelled like cold leaves.

"You were right about the porch," Denise said.

Ray nodded slowly, savoring it, not saying anything, which was itself a kind of answer.

Below them the hills went blue, then purple, then simply dark, and the bugs started up exactly as promised.


Marisol and Dave Whitaker had been talking about the trip since February, and now it was almost October, which was how most of their plans went.

They decided on Thursday night, standing in the kitchen while the dishwasher ran. Two nights at a motel near the lake, three hours north. Dave found a place online with a decent rate and a picture of a dock.

"That picture's from 2011," Marisol said, leaning over his shoulder.

"Everything's from 2011."

She laughed and went to check whether her sister could take the dog.

Friday she left work at three, which meant leaving a report unfinished, which meant she thought about it the whole drive home. Dave was already packing, which for him meant putting two shirts and a phone charger in a duffel bag and calling it done. Marisol packed a real suitcase: layers, because the lake would be cold at night, plus the good boots, plus a book she'd been carrying around for eight months without opening.

They loaded the car at 4:40 and hit traffic immediately.

"We should've left at noon," Dave said.

"You had a meeting at noon."

"I could've skipped it."

"You could not have skipped it."

By the time they cleared the interstate the sun was low and orange through the windshield, and Marisol found a station playing songs they both knew. Dave drove with one hand and ate crackers from a sleeve balanced on his knee. They talked about the roof, and then about her mother, and then about nothing, comfortably, for twenty miles.

The motel was smaller than the picture but the dock was real. They dropped their bags and walked out to the end of it in the dark, the boards giving slightly, the water making small sounds underneath.

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

Dave put his arm around her. "I have them occasionally."


The Ramirez Kitchen Table, Thursday Night

Delia spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, even though Marcus had already pulled the route up on his phone. She liked the paper better. It showed everything at once—the whole state, the blue veins of rivers, the little green blotches of state parks.

"Three hours to the cabin, if we leave by seven," Marcus said. He was rinsing the last of the dinner dishes, sleeves pushed up past his elbows. "Four if you want to stop at that farm stand."

"I want to stop at the farm stand."

"Then four." He said it without turning around, but she could hear him smiling.

They had not taken a trip alone since the spring, when Marcus's mother was still in the hospital and every weekend belonged to somebody else. Now it was October, and the cabin belonged to Delia's cousin, who owed them a favor, and there was nothing on the calendar but two empty squares.

Delia made a list on the back of an envelope. Coffee. The good blanket. Marcus's blood pressure pills. She wrote *books?* and then crossed it out, because they never read on trips, they just carried books around like proof of intention.

Friday morning they left at 7:20, which Marcus declared a personal victory. The highway was gray and half-empty. Delia drove the first stretch with the window cracked, and Marcus fell asleep against the door within twenty minutes, the way he always did, his glasses sliding down.

She let him sleep. Somewhere past the second exit, the subdivisions gave out and the fields opened up, brown and stubbled, fog still lying in the low spots.

When he woke, he blinked at the fields and said, "Where are we?"

"Nowhere yet," Delia said. "Farm stand's in ten miles."

He straightened his glasses. "Good. I'll buy you apples."


The Vasquez-Chen Weekend

Diane spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, though her phone sat right there with better maps. "Two hours and forty minutes," she said. "If we leave by nine, we're checked in before lunch."

Marcus was rinsing the breakfast dishes. "Nine's optimistic. You'll remember something at eight fifty-five."

"That happened once."

"That happened in June, September, and again over Thanksgiving."

She let it go because he was right, and because she was already writing the list: phone chargers, the good pillow, Marcus's blood pressure medication, the bag of trail mix she'd bought specifically so they wouldn't stop at every gas station between here and the coast.

They'd chosen the coast because it was close and because their daughter had sent a link to a bed-and-breakfast with a wraparound porch, along with a text that read: *You two haven't gone anywhere since the surgery. GO.* Marcus had grumbled about the price. Diane had booked it that night.

Saturday morning, he loaded the car while she watered the ferns and left a note for the neighbor about the mail. At 9:12 they pulled out of the driveway.

"Twelve minutes," Marcus said.

"That's practically nine."

He turned onto the highway and she found a station playing music from before either of them had gray hair. Forty minutes in, they stopped anyway — not for gas station snacks but for coffee, because Marcus said the trail mix was too healthy to be food.

The land flattened. Farm stands gave way to pine, pine gave way to that particular gray-blue light that means water is coming. Diane rolled her window down two inches and smelled salt.

"There," she said.

"I see it."

Neither of them said anything else for a while. The road curved. Somewhere behind them, the house sat empty, and neither of them thought about it once.


The Nguyens had been talking about the coast for three years, and on a Tuesday in October, Thanh finally opened the laptop at the kitchen table and said, "Two nights. That's all I want."

Bea leaned over her shoulder, still holding a dish towel. "Two nights is eight meals if you count the drive."

"Nine if we stop for pie."

They booked a motel in Astoria, one with a photograph of a balcony that might or might not still exist. Thanh printed the confirmation because she didn't trust her phone in cell dead zones, and Bea started a list on the back of an envelope: rain jackets, the good thermos, phone chargers, the pills Bea took for her blood pressure. Neither of them wrote down "books," and both of them packed four.

The hard part was the dog. Their neighbor's teenager agreed for twenty dollars a day, which Bea thought was robbery and Thanh thought was reasonable, and they argued about it pleasantly for most of Thursday evening without changing anything.

They left Saturday at 6:40, which was forty minutes later than Thanh had planned and two hours earlier than Bea had hoped. The car smelled like coffee and the banana Bea ate while merging. For the first hour they didn't talk much. The sky went from black to gray to a thin, apologetic gold over the fields.

Outside Longview, Thanh said, "I forgot the good thermos."

"It's behind my seat."

"You packed it?"

"I packed everything on the list. And the books you pretended not to bring."

Thanh laughed and put her hand on Bea's knee, and Bea let it sit there while she drove, both of them watching the road bend west toward water they hadn't seen since before the surgery, before the long strange year, back when two nights away had seemed like something they could always do later.


The Ortegas had been talking about the lake for three years, and on Thursday night Renée finally said it out loud: "Let's just go."

Marcus was standing at the sink with a scrub brush in his hand. He didn't answer right away, which she had learned meant he was already doing arithmetic — gas, the motel, whether the truck would make it past Bakersfield without complaining. "Two nights," he said finally. "Back Sunday by dinner. I've got the inventory Monday."

"Two nights."

They packed Friday after work, which meant packing after seven, because Renée's shift at the clinic ran long and Marcus stayed late to help the new kid close out the register. She pulled the duffel from the top of the closet and found a swimsuit she hadn't worn since before her knee surgery. She held it up, considered it, and threw it in anyway.

Marcus made a list on the back of an envelope. Coffee. The good cooler, not the one with the busted latch. Ice, but buy it there. He checked the tire pressure in the driveway under the porch light while the neighbor's dog barked at him steadily, personally.

"You want to leave tonight or at five?" he asked, coming back in.

"Five. I want to see the sun come up somewhere that isn't here."

They left at 5:40, which was close enough. Renée drove the first stretch because Marcus was still half asleep, his head against the window, his hand resting on her thigh out of thirty-one years of habit. The highway was empty and gray, and then, past the pass, it turned gold.

He woke up and said, "You should've told me it was doing that."

"I'm telling you now."

They stopped at a diner outside Fresno and split an order of hash browns, and neither of them mentioned the inventory, or the clinic, or Monday.


Marisol Reyes had the cooler packed by six-thirty, though Danny was still upstairs arguing with the zipper on the duffel bag they'd owned since before the kids.

"Two nights," she called up. "You don't need four pairs of shoes."

"I need two. The boots are for if it rains."

They were driving to a rented cabin ninety minutes north, a place Marisol had found on her phone during a slow shift at the clinic. Forty-one dollars a night in the off-season, a wood stove, a lake that would be too cold for swimming. She had shown Danny the pictures and he'd said, without looking up from the truck's maintenance schedule, "Book it."

Their daughter was staying with Danny's sister. Their son was nineteen and at community college and had made it clear he did not want to come, which stung Marisol more than she admitted.

Danny came down carrying the duffel and a paper sack of oranges. "For the road."

"We have snacks."

"Now we have oranges."

They loaded the car in the gray light. Marisol drove the first stretch because Danny had worked Thursday overnight and his eyes had that glassy look. He fell asleep before they reached the interstate, head tipped against the window, and she let the radio stay low and thought about nothing in particular, which was the point.

He woke at the exit for gas. Inside the station he bought coffee for both of them and a scratch-off ticket, which he lost, and he handed her the cup and said, "You want me to take over?"

"I'm good."

The road narrowed and started to climb. Bare maples, a hand-painted sign for firewood, a creek running fast and brown alongside the shoulder. Danny rolled his window down two inches and the cold came in smelling like wet leaves.

"There," Marisol said, pointing. "The green mailbox."

Danny leaned forward. "That's it?"

"That's it."


Marisol had the calendar open on the kitchen counter before Dave finished his coffee.

"Two nights," she said. "We leave Friday after your shift, we're back Sunday by dinner. Your mother can keep the dog."

Dave squinted at the circled dates. "Where are we going that's two nights?"

"The lake. The one with the cabins, the little store, that place with the fried perch."

He remembered it — they'd gone eleven years ago, before the kids, before the second mortgage, when Marisol still wore sunglasses she hadn't found at the bottom of a purse. "Cabins are probably booked."

"I already called. There's one left, the one by the boat launch. It smells like cedar, the woman said."

"That means it smells like mildew."

But he was already reaching for the notepad, because that was how it worked: she decided, he provisioned. He made a list. Coffee, the good kind, because the cabin coffee would be terrible. The cooler. Bug spray. The folding chairs from the garage, the ones with the frayed webbing he kept meaning to replace.

Friday came humid and gray. Marisol packed too much — three books, two sweaters, a bag of grapes that would go soft. Dave loaded the trunk in the exact configuration he'd worked out in his head, then unloaded half of it when she came out with a box fan.

"It's a cabin," she said. "There won't be air conditioning."

They pulled out at 5:40, later than planned, and hit traffic on the bypass. She put on a playlist she'd made and he complained about it and then hummed along anyway. Somewhere past the county line the highway opened up and the sky went gold at the edges, and Marisol rolled her window down and put her hand out flat against the moving air.

"See," she said. "We're doing it."

Dave didn't answer, but he sped up a little.


Marisol and Dev had been talking about the cabin for two years, and on Thursday night Dev finally booked it, three hours north, two nights, no cell service promised on the website.

Marisol made the list. She always made the list, on the back of an envelope from the electric company: coffee, the good blanket, Dev's inhaler, the paperback she'd been carrying from room to room since March without opening. Dev read the list over her shoulder while eating cereal standing up and said they should bring the cast iron pan. She wrote it down.

Friday afternoon they left later than planned. Dev had a call that ran long; Marisol used the extra hour to water the neighbor's plants and text her sister the address, just in case. When Dev came out to the driveway carrying the cooler, she was already in the passenger seat with the seat reclined an inch, sunglasses on, the envelope tucked into the door pocket.

They stopped for gas outside the city and split a bag of pretzels that turned out to be stale. Dev drove the first leg. Marisol read road signs aloud in a bad accent for reasons neither of them could explain, and Dev laughed the way he only did in the car, loud, both hands on the wheel.

The highway thinned into two lanes. The light went gold, then orange, then the color of weak tea. Marisol took over driving near the reservoir because Dev's eyes got bad at dusk, and he fell asleep against the window with his mouth open, which she found both irritating and dear.

The cabin's key was under a rock shaped like a loaf of bread, exactly as promised. Inside smelled like cedar and old smoke. Dev found the light switch. Marisol set the cooler on the counter, looked around at the small crooked rooms, and said, "Okay. Yes. This."


The Weekend at Pine Lake

Denise found the cabin listing on a Tuesday, between loads of laundry. Two nights, off-season rate, a wood stove and a dock. She showed Ray the photos on her phone while he ate his cereal standing at the counter, the way he always did.

"Three hours?" he asked.

"Two and a half if we leave before noon."

He looked at the picture of the dock a second longer than he needed to. "Book it."

They spent Thursday evening assembling the kind of pile that accumulates by the front door of a house where two people have learned each other's habits. Ray checked the oil and the tire pressure, then wrote a note for the neighbor about the mail. Denise packed the cooler—hard-boiled eggs, the good cheddar, a thermos of coffee for the road—and threw in the fleece blanket that lived in the hall closet because Ray always claimed he wouldn't be cold and always was.

They argued mildly about the route. He wanted the highway; she wanted the two-lane that went past the orchards. They took the two-lane.

Friday morning was gray and mild. Denise drove the first hour while Ray dozed with his head tipped against the window, waking once to point out a hawk on a fencepost. They stopped at a gas station that sold homemade fudge and bought a piece to split, then didn't split it evenly, which neither of them mentioned.

The cabin was smaller than the photos suggested and smelled faintly of cedar and old smoke. Ray got the wood stove going on the second try. Denise unpacked the cooler into a refrigerator that hummed too loudly, then stepped out onto the dock in her jacket.

"Water's high," Ray said behind her.

"It's beautiful."

They stood there a while, not saying much, watching the light go soft over the far shore.


Marisol and Dean had been talking about the lake for three years, and on Thursday night Marisol finally opened her laptop at the kitchen table and booked the cabin before she could talk herself out of the price.

"Two nights," she announced. "Friday to Sunday. It has a woodstove."

Dean looked up from the sink, hands dripping. "Who's watching the dog?"

"Your sister. I already asked. She said yes before I finished the sentence, which either means she loves us or she wants something."

They packed Friday morning in the disorganized way they always did, which was to say Dean packed nothing until Marisol had packed everything, then wandered through the house adding items to the pile: a deck of cards, a bag of coffee he insisted was better than whatever the cabin would have, a flashlight with questionable batteries. Marisol repacked the cooler twice because he had put the eggs at the bottom.

They left at two to beat the worst of the traffic and got caught in it anyway, forty minutes of brake lights on the interstate. Dean drove. Marisol read aloud from a paperback she'd started in April, and when she lost her place she made up the rest, and Dean pretended not to notice for a while and then said, "That's not what it says."

"How would you know?"

"Because nobody writes a sentence like that."

They stopped at a gas station outside of town and bought sunflower seeds and two bad cups of coffee and stood in the parking lot for a minute, stretching, not talking, watching the light go long and gold across the fields.

The cabin was smaller than the photos and colder, and the woodstove took Dean twenty minutes and three false starts to catch. Marisol unpacked the cooler onto a counter that tilted slightly toward the window.

By dark they had the fire going. Neither of them mentioned the tilt.


Marisol and Dave had been talking about the lake for three weeks before they actually looked at a calendar. It was Dave who finally pulled up the reservation site on a Tuesday night, standing at the kitchen counter with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, squinting anyway.

"Two nights, Friday to Sunday," he said. "The little cabin with the green roof. It's ninety-four dollars."

Marisol was wiping down the stove, which didn't need it. "Ninety-four total, or ninety-four a night?"

"A night."

She made a sound, considered it, and said, "Book it."

Friday afternoon they packed the car in the driveway while their neighbor's dog barked at nothing. Dave was a loader — he had opinions about weight distribution and had once refused to leave for a trip until the suitcase was rotated ninety degrees. Marisol handled provisions: a cooler with sandwiches, two thermoses of coffee, a bag of pretzels she'd already opened, grapes, and a bottle of wine she wrapped in a beach towel so it wouldn't clink.

"Did you get my blue jacket?" he asked.

"It's on top. Did you turn off the water heater?"

He hadn't. He went back inside.

They pulled out at 4:15, which was later than planned but earlier than usual for them. Marisol drove the first leg because Dave hated merging onto the interstate. She put on a podcast about a shipwreck; he fell asleep twenty minutes in, head tipped toward the window, and she let him.

He woke up near the county line, disoriented, and said, "Are we there?"

"Forty more minutes."

"Did I snore?"

"Spectacularly."

They stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign about boiled peanuts. Dave bought a bag. Marisol said she didn't want any, then ate half of them, and neither of them mentioned it, and the road went gold in the late light.


Marisol Peña checked the oil in the Corolla while Danny loaded the cooler into the trunk, wedging it beside the folding chairs they'd owned since their first apartment.

"You packed the good sunscreen?" she asked.

"Both bottles. And your sun hat, which was under the bed, which is not where sun hats go."

She let that one pass. Thirty-one years in, she'd learned which hills were worth it.

They were driving to Rocky Point, three hours south, to a motel Danny's cousin had recommended — nothing fancy, but it had a balcony facing the water and a coffee maker that worked. Two nights. Marisol had traded a shift at the clinic to make it happen; Danny had put in for Friday off back in March, which was as close to advance planning as he ever got.

The route argument started at the on-ramp and lasted eleven miles. Danny wanted the highway. Marisol wanted the county road because of the fruit stand outside Villaseca, the one with the peaches and the old woman who always asked about their daughter. Danny took the county road. He always did, eventually.

They stopped at the fruit stand. They bought peaches and a bag of pistachios and a jar of honey they didn't need. Marisol texted a photo of the peaches to their daughter in Denver, who wouldn't answer until evening, and that was fine.

Back in the car, Danny put on the radio station that played the old stuff, and Marisol put her bare feet up on the dashboard the way she'd been doing since she was twenty-four and he'd told her it was dangerous and she'd told him to mind the road.

By four they could smell salt. By four-thirty they were on the balcony with the chairs unfolded, saying nothing at all, which after thirty-one years was its own kind of conversation.


The Ndiaye-Kowalskis had been talking about the lake for three years, and this time Amina wrote it on the calendar in pen.

"Two nights," she said. "Friday to Sunday. That's all I'm asking."

Piotr looked up from the sink, where he was scrubbing a pot that had held Thursday's soup. "Two nights means finding someone for the dog."

"Ruthie already said yes. I texted her at lunch."

He dried his hands and came to look at the calendar, as if the ink might reveal something he'd missed. October 17th and 18th. Nothing else on those squares. He had expected to find a conflict — there was always a conflict — but the days sat there empty and available, almost daring him.

They spent Wednesday evening arguing pleasantly about what to bring. Amina wanted the good coffee and the French press; Piotr said the cabin had a coffee maker and they were driving four hours, not emigrating. She packed the French press anyway, wrapped in a dish towel. He packed a chainsaw, which she discovered Friday morning in the trunk and refused to discuss.

They left at six-fifteen, later than planned, and stopped for gas outside of town where Amina bought sunflower seeds and a lottery ticket. Piotr drove the first two hours with the radio low, and she read aloud from an article about a woman who had walked across Mongolia. The interstate gave way to two lanes, and then to a road with grass growing in the middle.

The cabin smelled like cedar and cold. Piotr carried in the bags while Amina opened the windows to let the summer out. Somewhere below them, past the trees, the lake made the small unbothered sounds that lakes make.

"There," she said, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. "Was that so hard?"

He didn't answer. He was already looking for an outlet for the coffee maker.


Marisol had circled the weekend on the kitchen calendar three weeks earlier, drawing a little sun beside the dates. Now it was Friday, and she was in the bedroom rolling shirts instead of folding them, a trick her sister swore by.

"Did you print the reservation?" she called.

Dev appeared in the doorway holding his phone, glasses pushed up into his hair. "It's on here. And on the app. And I emailed it to you, so we have it three ways."

"You're the one who lost the tickets in Ohio."

"That was eleven years ago."

"I'm going to say it for eleven more."

They were driving two and a half hours north to a lake town neither had visited, a place Marisol found while half-watching television. The cabin had a wood stove and a canoe that came with it, according to the listing, though the photograph of the canoe looked older than the photograph of the cabin.

Dev carried the cooler out to the car and arranged it behind the passenger seat, then rearranged it, then took out the eggs because he decided they'd buy breakfast in town instead. Marisol locked the back door twice, tugged it once more, and set the porch light on the timer. The neighbor had a key and instructions about the mail.

They pulled out at 4:20, which was later than planned and earlier than expected. Marisol drove first. Dev held the paper map he insisted on bringing, unfolded across his knees like a picnic blanket, though he mostly watched the fields go by.

Somewhere past the second gas station, the traffic thinned and the road began to rise. Marisol rolled her window down two inches and the air came in smelling like cut hay and something green.

"We should do this more," Dev said.

"We say that every time."

"One of these times it'll take."

She reached over. He took her hand.


Marisol woke before the alarm, the way she always did on Fridays, and lay listening to the house tick. Beside her, Tomás was still asleep, one arm flung across the space where the dog used to sleep. She let him have another ten minutes.

They had been talking about the cabin since February. Two hours north, a friend of a friend's place with a woodstove and no cell service, sixty dollars a night because the friend of a friend liked them. Marisol had written it on the wall calendar in green marker: CABIN, with a small star, as though the star would hold the weekend in place against everything that usually knocked such things loose.

By seven Tomás was making coffee and reading the forecast aloud, low forties, chance of rain Saturday afternoon. "Bring the good boots," he said. Marisol was already pulling them from the hall closet, along with the wool blanket that smelled faintly of every trip they'd ever taken it on.

They packed the way they always packed, which was to say inefficiently and with too much food. Tomás insisted on the cast iron skillet. Marisol insisted on three books she would not open. They argued mildly about whether to bring the folding chairs, agreed to bring them, then left them leaning against the garage wall.

The car started on the second try. Tomás backed down the driveway while Marisol adjusted the vents, and at the corner he asked, without turning his head, whether she'd locked the back door. She had. He knew she had. It was part of the leaving.

Twenty minutes out, the suburbs thinned into fields the color of wet cardboard, and Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he'd asked her not to do a thousand times, and he said nothing at all, and she understood that the weekend had officially begun.


The Nguyens had been talking about the coast for three years, and on Thursday night Bích finally put it on the calendar in pen.

"Two nights," she said, standing in the kitchen with the laptop open beside a colander of rinsed herbs. "We leave Saturday morning, we come back Sunday evening. Anything more and I'll spend the whole time thinking about Monday."

Tam was at the table paying the water bill. He looked up. "Which motel?"

"The one with the parking lot facing the water. Eighty-nine a night."

"Book it."

They packed Friday after dinner, which took less time than either expected. Tam pulled the small suitcase from the closet shelf and found a beach towel still folded inside it from a trip they couldn't place. Bích laughed and put it back in. She packed sandwiches, a thermos, two apples, and a bag of the rice crackers Tam liked, because she knew what roadside food cost and refused to pay it on principle.

Saturday morning they left at six-forty. Tam drove the first hour with the radio low, and Bích watched the fog break apart over the farmland. Somewhere past the second exit she fell asleep against the window, and he let her, adjusting the vent so the air wouldn't blow on her face.

They stopped once for gas. She took over driving and he opened the thermos, and they talked about their daughter's car insurance, then about nothing, then about a neighbor's fence.

The motel wasn't ready when they arrived, so they walked down to the water in their jackets. The sand was cold and the wind came in hard off the gray Pacific, and Bích held onto his arm to keep her balance on the slope.

"Not bad," Tam said.

"Two nights," she said. "We should have done three."


Rosa checked the oil in the Corolla while Marcus loaded the cooler into the trunk, wedging it beside the folded stroller they hadn't needed in two years but never took out.

"Did you print the reservation?" she asked.

"It's on my phone."

"Print it. Last time your phone died in the parking garage."

He didn't argue. He went back inside, and she heard the ancient printer grinding out its complaint from the spare room. Their son was at her mother's for the weekend, and the house already sounded different—larger, and slightly accusatory about it.

They had chosen the cabin because it was ninety minutes away and cost less than two nights of the beach places Marcus kept sending her links for. Rosa had done the math at the kitchen table on a Tuesday, the way she did all the math, and told him: this one, in October, when the rates drop. He'd said fine, then spent a week talking about the beach anyway, the way he did.

Now he came out with the paper folded into quarters and put it in the glove box.

"Happy?"

"Ecstatic," she said, and he laughed, because she almost never used words like that.

They stopped for gas at the Shell on Route 9. Marcus bought two coffees and a bag of the sour candy she liked and pretended she didn't. Rosa took the first driving shift because the highway merge near the interchange made him tense, and because she liked the beginning of a trip best—that first thirty miles where nothing had gone wrong yet.

Somewhere past the outlet malls the trees started, still holding their color. Marcus put his hand on the back of her neck, briefly, then turned up the radio.

"Two whole days," he said.

"Two whole days," Rosa agreed, and passed a truck.


Marisol had the cooler packed before Dave finished loading the truck. Two nights in a cabin near Ruidoso — nothing extravagant, a place a coworker had recommended, cheap in the off-season.

"Did you grab the coffee?" she called from the kitchen.

"Got it. And the percolator, because I know how you get."

She let that pass. He wasn't wrong. Motel coffee made her miserable, and misery on a short trip was a waste of the drive.

They'd been married nineteen years. Their son was at community college now, working weekends at an auto parts store, and the house had gone quiet in a way that still surprised them both. Marisol had suggested the trip in September and then let it sit until Dave, three weeks later, brought it up again like it was his idea. She let him have that too.

He backed the truck out at six-forty in the morning, before the heat came up. Marisol handled the map on her phone, though they both knew the road. She read him the weather — high fifties, chance of rain Saturday night — and he said rain would be fine, they'd have the woodstove.

Around Alamogordo they stopped for breakfast burritos at a place with a hand-painted sign. Dave ate his in the cab with the door open, one boot on the running board. Marisol walked to the edge of the gravel lot and looked at the white sand haze in the distance, arms crossed against the wind.

"You okay?" he asked when she came back.

"Just haven't seen it in a while."

They drove up into the pines with the windows cracked, and the temperature dropped ten degrees in twenty minutes. Dave turned the radio down without being asked. Marisol put her hand on the back of his neck and left it there, and neither of them said anything for a long stretch of road.


Marisol Reyes had the cooler packed before her husband finished his coffee. She'd been up since five, not because the drive to Big Bear required it, but because she liked the quiet hour when the house was still hers alone.

"You're bringing the whole refrigerator," Danny said, leaning against the doorframe in his work boots, which he wore out of habit even on Saturdays.

"I'm bringing food so we don't spend forty dollars on gas station sandwiches like last time."

He didn't argue. Thirty-one years of marriage had taught him which battles were worth the breath. Instead he carried the cooler out to the truck and wedged it behind the passenger seat, next to the folding chairs and the duffel bag Marisol had labeled in Sharpie: TOWELS + EXTRA SOCKS.

They'd booked the cabin on a Tuesday, impulsively, after Marisol's sister canceled a visit. Two nights. Danny had checked the tire pressure Thursday evening and topped off the washer fluid, small rituals of preparation that gave him more pleasure than he'd admit.

The kids were grown—Elena in Sacramento, Marco somewhere between jobs in Phoenix—and the house had gotten large in a way that had nothing to do with square footage.

By seven-thirty they were on the 210, Danny driving, Marisol working through a bag of pistachios and reading road signs aloud out of some old compulsion. The mountains came up brown and then gradually green.

"We should do this more," she said.

"You say that every time."

"And I mean it every time."

At a turnout near Running Springs, Danny pulled over so she could take a picture of the valley haze below them. She made him get in the frame. He complained. He always complained. Then he put his arm around her shoulders and looked at the camera, and afterward, back in the truck, he asked to see how it came out.


Marguerite and Dev had been talking about the cabin for three years, and on a Tuesday in October, Dev finally clicked the reserve button before he could talk himself out of the deposit.

"Two nights," he announced from the kitchen table. "Friday to Sunday. There's a wood stove."

Marguerite came in holding a dish towel. "Is there cell service?"

"The listing says spotty."

"So no."

"So no," Dev agreed.

She thought about the week ahead — the audit at work, her mother's cardiology appointment on Thursday, the gutters that still needed clearing. Then she thought about waking up somewhere that wasn't this house. "Okay," she said. "But we're leaving by four, not six. I'm not driving mountain roads in the dark again."

They left at four forty, which Dev considered a victory. Marguerite had packed the cooler the night before: eggs, a brick of cheddar, coffee, two bottles of wine, the good bread from the place on Sycamore. Dev had packed a duffel bag eleven minutes before departure and forgotten a towel.

The interstate was ugly for an hour — outlet malls, a Cracker Barrel, brake lights stacked up near the merge. Marguerite drove. Dev fiddled with the radio until she put her hand over his.

"Just leave it," she said.

"It's static."

"It's fine."

Past the second exit the land began to fold. Hills, then real hills, the sun going low and orange behind a ridge of half-bare maples. Dev rolled the window down two inches and the car filled with cold air that smelled like wet leaves and woodsmoke.

"There," Marguerite said, nodding at a sign for the county road.

Dev unfolded the printed directions on his knee, because there was no service, and read them out loud in the dimming light while she drove them up into the dark.


Marisol pulled the atlas from the closet shelf, even though Dev had already mapped the route on his phone. She liked the paper version, the way the highways looked like veins.

"Two nights," Dev said, counting on his fingers from the kitchen. "Friday after I close up, Sunday back by dinner. Your mother wants us for dinner."

"My mother wants *you* for dinner. I'm incidental."

He laughed and kept packing the cooler. Sandwiches, because the gas station food on Route 30 was a crime against the stomach. Two apples. A thermos of coffee he'd fill at four in the morning if Marisol woke early, which she would.

They had chosen the lake cabin because a coworker had offered it cheap, and because neither of them had been anywhere since the roof repair ate the summer. Marisol wrote a list on the back of an envelope: swimsuits, the good flashlight, bug spray, the book she'd been failing to read for six weeks. Dev added *cards* and *the speaker*, and then, after a pause, *Marisol's inhaler*, because she forgot it every time.

Friday came humid and gold. They loaded the car in fifteen minutes, arguing pleasantly about whether the folding chairs were necessary. Dev won; the chairs went in. Marisol drove the first leg while he slept with his head against the window, mouth slightly open, and she turned the radio down instead of off.

Outside Lancaster they stopped for gas and stretched in the parking lot, backs popping. He bought her a bag of the terrible orange peanut butter crackers she loved and pretended to be embarrassed by.

They reached the cabin at dusk. The lake was flat and pewter-colored. Dev carried the cooler; Marisol found the light switch. Somewhere out on the water, a bird made a sound like a door swinging open.


Marisol had the cooler packed before Dennis finished his coffee.

"Two nights," he said, eyeing the pile by the door. "Not two weeks."

"The ice chest is mostly for the drive back. Your mother always sends food home with us." She zipped the duffel and set it beside her purse. "And I'm not eating gas station taquitos again."

They'd settled on Fredericksburg after three weeks of half-conversations — over dishes, during commercials, in the truck on the way to her sister's. Dennis had wanted the coast, but October in Galveston meant crowds, and Marisol pointed out that the hill country peaches would be gone but the wineries wouldn't. He'd conceded on the condition that they stop at the barbecue place off 290, the one with the gravel lot and no sign.

He'd booked the room himself, which she found touching and slightly alarming. It was a bed-and-breakfast with a name involving the word "Rose," and he'd read the reviews out loud to her in bed, squinting at his phone without his glasses.

Their daughter was at college in San Marcos, close enough that they'd texted her about meeting for lunch Sunday. She'd replied with a thumbs-up, which Marisol chose to interpret as enthusiasm.

At seven-forty Dennis backed the truck out while Marisol locked the door and checked it twice. The neighbor's sprinklers were running. She climbed in, adjusted the vent, and handed him the travel mug she'd filled without being asked.

"Playlist or radio?" he said.

"Radio till we're past the loop. Then I'm putting on my music."

"That's the deal every time."

"It's a good deal."

He merged onto the highway. The sun was still low and orange, and the traffic thinned out past the last strip mall. Marisol put her feet up on the dash, and Dennis, who normally objected, said nothing at all.


The Rivera-Chen Weekend

The spreadsheet was Daniel's idea, but Priya was the one who filled it in.

"Gas, tolls, one night at the motel," she said, tapping the laptop screen at the kitchen table. "If we leave Friday after your shift, we're at the lake by eight."

Daniel leaned over her shoulder, still smelling faintly of the warehouse — cardboard dust and cold air. "Eight-thirty. There's construction on the 31."

"Fine. Eight-thirty." She adjusted the cell. "That still leaves Saturday for the whole day."

They had not been anywhere in fourteen months. Not for lack of wanting — there had been the transmission, and then Priya's mother's hip, and then the stretch when Daniel's hours got cut and they ate a lot of rice. But the tax refund had come in March, and some of it was still sitting there, quietly, like a held breath.

Thursday night, Daniel checked the tire pressure in the driveway while Priya packed. She was ruthless about it: two changes of clothes each, the good towels because the motel's would be thin, a cooler of sandwiches so they wouldn't stop at a drive-through.

"Did you pack the cribbage board?" he called through the screen door.

"It's in the front pocket."

"You're a good woman."

"I know."

Friday came slow. Priya finished her charting at the clinic by four and was home changing when Daniel pulled in, still in his steel-toes. He showered in nine minutes. She timed him.

The car smelled like the pine air freshener he'd bought at the gas station, too strong, and they both rolled the windows down and laughed about it. She had a playlist. He had opinions about the playlist.

Somewhere past the county line the fields opened up and turned gold in the low sun, and Priya put her bare feet on the dash, and Daniel said nothing about it, which was its own kind of gift.


Marisol counted the cash again at the kitchen table, thumbing bills into two piles: gas and everything else. Two hundred and forty dollars for three days. It would have to stretch.

"Motel in Tulsa's sixty-two a night," Dev said, angling the laptop toward her. "Free breakfast. Waffle machine."

"You and that waffle machine."

"It's a legitimate factor."

They'd been married eleven years, and this was the first trip since her mother's funeral — just the two of them, no kids in the back seat, because Marisol's sister had finally offered to take the boys. Dev had almost said no out of habit. Marisol had said yes before he could open his mouth.

Friday afternoon they packed the Corolla, which had 197,000 miles and a check-engine light Dev had decided was philosophical rather than mechanical. Marisol brought a cooler: turkey sandwiches, grapes, two liters of off-brand cola, because gas station food cost more than the motel some nights. Dev brought a tire gauge and a CD he'd burned in 2009, which he presented like a bouquet.

"You still have a CD player in here," she said.

"That's the whole point."

They left at four-thirty and hit traffic immediately. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed. Somewhere past the county line the sky opened up wide and orange and the radio towers blinked, and she reached over and put her hand on the back of his neck.

"We could've done this sooner," she said.

"We're doing it now."

At a Love's outside Joplin they split a bag of peanut M&M's and argued cheerfully about whether to detour to see the world's largest something. Dev filled the tank to exactly thirty dollars. Marisol watched him in the fluorescent light, still recognizable as the man she'd married, and got back in the car.


Marisol had the cooler packed before Deon finished loading the truck.

"You got the folding chairs?" she called from the kitchen doorway, holding a bag of oranges she'd bought that morning at the market on Buckner.

"Chairs, chairs." Deon patted the tailgate like he was checking his own pockets. "Chairs are in. Blanket's in. I couldn't find the little grill."

"It's in the garage behind the paint cans. You put it there in April."

He laughed and went to get it. They'd been married nineteen years and she still remembered where he'd set things down.

The plan was modest: two nights at a cabin near Broken Bow, three hours up Highway 259, booked in September when the rates dropped. Their daughter was at college in Denton and their son was staying with Deon's mother, so for the first time in a long while, the house would be empty and the weekend would be theirs. Marisol had printed the reservation confirmation and folded it into the glove box, because she did not trust her phone to have service in the woods.

They pulled out at seven-fifteen, later than Deon wanted and earlier than Marisol expected. He drove the first stretch while she read aloud from the cabin's listing—wood stove, a porch swing, a short trail down to the water.

"Says there's no Wi-Fi," she said.

"Good."

They stopped in Paris for gas and kolaches and he insisted on paying cash. Outside Broken Bow the pines closed in on both sides of the road, and Marisol rolled her window down two inches just to smell them.

The cabin key was under a ceramic frog, exactly as promised. Deon carried the cooler in. Marisol stood on the porch a moment, listening to nothing at all, then went inside to open the windows.


Marisol and Dave Okoye had been talking about the cabin for three years, and on a Thursday night in October they finally booked it.

"Two nights," Marisol said, angling the laptop so he could see the photo: a plain A-frame with a woodstove, ninety minutes north. "It's cheaper than the hotel by the lake, and we don't have to dress up for breakfast."

Dave was standing at the counter eating cereal for dinner, which he did whenever his shift ended after nine. He leaned over and squinted at the screen. "No cell service?"

"Spotty."

"Book it."

They spent Friday evening packing, which meant Marisol packed and Dave carried things to the car. She made a list on the back of an envelope: coffee, the good pan, the fleece blanket that lived on the couch, a deck of cards. Dave added beer and a bag of charcoal without asking, and she pretended not to notice, then added marshmallows without telling him.

Their daughter was staying with Marisol's sister across town. The drop-off took longer than planned—there were tears, then a negotiation involving a specific stuffed rabbit—so they didn't pull out of the driveway until nearly ten Saturday morning.

Dave drove. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which she noticed. The highway thinned into a two-lane road, then into trees turning copper and rust. She found a country station, then a classic rock station, then turned the radio off entirely, and neither of them filled the silence for eleven miles.

"We should do this more," Dave said finally.

"We say that."

"I know."

The cabin was smaller than the photos and colder than expected. Dave knelt at the woodstove with a fistful of newspaper while Marisol opened the windows to let the stale air out, and by noon there was smoke rising and coffee on.


The Ramirez-Chen Weekend

Diane spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, even though her phone could have done the job faster. She liked the paper, the way the highways looked like veins.

"Two nights," she said. "We leave Friday after I close out the register, we're back Sunday by dinner."

Marcus was rinsing the breakfast dishes, sleeves pushed to his elbows. At fifty-three, he'd developed a habit of humming while he worked, something tuneless he didn't notice doing. "The cabin place or the beach place?"

"The cabin. The beach is a four-hour drive and we'd spend the whole time in traffic."

He dried his hands and came to look over her shoulder. Their daughter was at college in another state, their son married and living twenty minutes away, and the house had gotten quiet in a way that still surprised them both. Diane had started suggesting these trips about a year ago. Marcus had stopped pretending he needed convincing.

"There's a hardware store in that town," he said. "The old kind. I want to look at it."

"You want to look at a hardware store."

"I do."

Friday afternoon, she packed the cooler while he checked the tire pressure, because that was the division of labor they'd fallen into over twenty-six years without ever discussing it. She put in sandwiches, two apples, a thermos of coffee for him and iced tea for herself. He loaded the bags, adjusted the mirrors, found the radio station that played the songs they'd both liked in 1994.

They pulled onto the interstate at 5:40, later than planned. The sun sat low and orange over the exit signs.

"We'll get there after dark," Marcus said.

"That's all right." Diane put her feet up on the dash, the way she wasn't supposed to. "There's nothing there we need to see tonight."

He reached over and squeezed her knee, and neither of them said anything for a while.


The Alvarez-Chen Weekend

Marisol had the spreadsheet open before Daniel finished his coffee.

"Two nights," she said. "We leave Friday after I close out the register, we're back Sunday by six so you can prep for Monday."

Daniel leaned over her shoulder at the kitchen table. Their daughter's cereal bowl still sat by the sink; she was at her grandmother's until Sunday evening, which was the whole reason this was possible at all.

"That cabin place again?"

"Booked. Ninety-four a night, and they didn't charge the cleaning fee this time." Marisol tilted the laptop toward him. "But I want to stop at that orchard on the way. The one we passed in October."

"That adds forty minutes."

"It adds forty minutes and a pie."

He conceded, as he usually did on questions involving pie. Daniel spent Thursday evening changing the oil in the Corolla, which had 143,000 miles on it and a rattle he'd been ignoring since Christmas. Marisol packed for both of them because Daniel packed like a man fleeing a burning building — three shirts, no socks.

Friday came humid and gray. She got out at 5:40, still smelling faintly of the store, and he was idling in the lot with the windows down and a bag of pretzels on the passenger seat.

"Did you remember the phone charger?"

"Both of them."

They took the county road instead of the interstate because Marisol liked the barns. Somewhere past the second town, Daniel put on the playlist she'd made him in 2019, and she laughed at how dated it already sounded, and then sang along to all of it anyway.

The orchard was closing when they pulled in. The woman at the counter sold them the last apple pie of the day at half price, and Marisol carried it to the car like something newborn, and they drove the final hour into the hills with the smell of cinnamon filling the whole small space between them.


The Weekend at Bear Lake

Marisol had been circling the third weekend in October on the calendar since August. She worked the front desk at a dental office in Boise, and October was the only month her hours thinned out enough to justify leaving town.

"Two nights," she told Dale over dinner on Tuesday. "We can leave Friday after you get off."

Dale worked maintenance for the school district, which meant Fridays ended at three-thirty and nobody called him about it. He turned the idea over while he finished his potatoes. Their daughter was twenty-six now and living in Nampa with her boyfriend, so there was nobody to arrange for except the dog, and the neighbor girl would take her.

"Bear Lake?" he said.

"I found a cabin. It's not fancy. Two hundred and ten for both nights."

He nodded. That was fine. They had put a new water heater in the house in July and the credit card still showed it, but two hundred and ten dollars was a thing they could absorb.

Thursday night Marisol packed for both of them, because Dale would forget a jacket and then complain about the cold. She rolled sweatshirts, counted socks, and put the coffee maker from the kitchen counter into a grocery bag, since cabin coffee makers were never any good. Dale checked the tire pressure on the Silverado and topped off the washer fluid.

They left at four-fifteen on Friday, later than planned, because Dale had to swing back for his reading glasses. The highway ran southeast through stubble fields going gold, and Marisol put on a country station and then turned it down so they could talk about nothing in particular—her sister's knee surgery, the leak under the bathroom sink.

Outside Twin Falls they stopped for gas and split a bag of pretzels. Dale said the sky looked like snow. Marisol said it was too early for snow.


Marisol Vance had the cooler packed by six on Friday morning, though they weren't leaving until after Dennis finished his shift at the distribution center. She'd made the sandwiches the night before—turkey for her, ham and provolone for him—and wrapped them in wax paper the way her mother used to.

Dennis came through the door at 3:40, still smelling faintly of cardboard and diesel. "You already loaded the car?"

"Most of it. I couldn't get the chairs in the trunk with the cooler."

"They go in the back seat. I told you that last time."

"You told me they'd fit in the trunk last time."

He laughed, which surprised her a little, and went to change out of his work shirt. They'd been talking about the cabin since March, when Marisol's coworker mentioned her family had a place near Table Rock Lake that sat empty most weekends. Two nights, no cost except gas and whatever they ate. Dennis had resisted at first—he preferred staying home, the recliner, the yard he'd finally gotten level—but Marisol had worn him down by saying nothing about it for two weeks, then mentioning it once more at exactly the right moment.

They pulled out at 4:15. Dennis drove. Marisol read him the directions from a printout because the last stretch had no signal, then put her feet on the dash until he gave her a look and she took them down.

Somewhere past the second gas station, the highway opened up into hills going gold at the edges, and neither of them said anything for a while. She rolled the window down two inches. He turned the radio to a classic rock station that faded in and out.

"We should've done this in June," he said.

"We say that every year."

"Next June, then."

She didn't answer, but she reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he let it stay there.