Marisol found the shoebox while looking for the good scissors. Inside were the receipts she'd saved from their first year in the house—the hardware store, the paint samples, the emergency plumber they'd called at midnight when the pipe burst under the sink.

"Ten years," she said, carrying the box to the kitchen table where Dev was grading papers. "Ten years since we closed."

He set down his red pen. "You saved all this?"

"I saved everything that year. I thought if I could account for it, we could afford it."

They had talked about doing something big. A weekend in Charleston, maybe, or dinner at the place downtown with the tasting menu neither of them fully understood. Dev's sister had offered to take the dog. But sitting there, looking at the faded thermal paper, Marisol felt the pull of something quieter.

"What if we just stayed," she said.

Dev considered this. He was a man who liked a plan, who wrote itineraries for grocery runs, but he had learned over ten years that Marisol's instincts about time were usually right.

"We'd have to actually do something," he said. "Not just watch television and call it commemorative."

So they made a list. They walked the property line the way they had the day the realtor handed them the keys, pointing out the maple that had doubled, the fence they still hadn't fixed. Dev cooked the eggplant dish that had been a disaster their first Thanksgiving here and had since become good. Marisol pulled out the paint samples and they argued cheerfully about whether the hallway had ever really been the right color.

At dusk they sat on the back steps with beer and the dog between them.

"Same time next year?" Dev asked.

"Same steps," she said. "Different eggplant."

He laughed, and she leaned into him, and the porch light came on by itself, the way it did.


David found the receipt in a shoebox while looking for the good scissors—a faded slip from Halloran's Hardware, dated fifteen years ago that March. Two gallons of paint, one roller, a drop cloth they never actually used.

"Look what I found," he said, holding it up when Marcus came in from the garage.

Marcus wiped his hands on a rag and squinted at it. "Is that from the kitchen?"

"The kitchen." David laughed. "You said Sagebrush, I said Morning Fog, and we ended up with that awful green."

"It wasn't awful. It was *sophisticated*."

"It looked like split pea soup."

They'd talked about the anniversary for weeks without landing anywhere. Marcus's sister kept sending links to resorts in Tulum. David's coworker insisted they had to do the wine train up in Napa, that it was a bucket-list thing. But every option felt like it belonged to some other couple, people who took photographs of their meals.

Marcus set the rag down. "What if we just repainted it?"

David looked at him.

"Not green," Marcus added quickly. "But the trim's chipped, and we've been saying for three years we'd do something about that light fixture."

So that's what they did. They took a Friday off, drove to the same hardware store—still there, still smelling like sawdust and rubber—and stood in the paint aisle for forty minutes disagreeing about undertones. They settled on a warm white, which was David's pick, though Marcus argued he'd only conceded because he was hungry.

They painted all weekend. Marcus put on the terrible playlist he'd made in 2011. David got a streak of white in his eyebrow that didn't wash out until Tuesday. They ordered Thai food both nights and ate it sitting on the drop cloth, backs against the cabinets, looking at what they'd done.

"Fifteen years," Marcus said.

"In this kitchen," David said.


Marisol found the ticket stubs while cleaning out the junk drawer—two faded rectangles from the Orpheum, October 14th, eleven years ago.

"We kept these?" she called toward the kitchen.

Daniel came in wiping his hands on a dish towel. He took one, held it at arm's length the way he did now with small print. "That was the night the projector broke. We sat in the dark for forty minutes."

"You told me about your grandmother's farm."

"You told me you hated your job."

"I did hate that job."

They were quiet a moment. The ticket stubs sat on the counter between them like something excavated.

"So," Daniel said. "Twelve years next Saturday. Your sister keeps asking what we're doing."

Marisol had ideas. A restaurant downtown with tasting menus, or the bed and breakfast in Galena that Karen wouldn't shut up about. She said both aloud, and watched Daniel nod politely in the way that meant he was calculating the drive.

"What do you actually want?" she asked.

He set down the towel. "Honestly? I want to sleep in. I want to go to the farmers market and buy too many tomatoes. I want to cook something that takes four hours."

"That's just a Saturday."

"That's a good Saturday."

She considered this. The house was quiet—the kids at her mother's, the dishwasher humming through its cycle. Twelve years of Saturdays, most of them ordinary, a few of them terrible, some she'd trade nothing for.

"The tomatoes have to be from the Amish stand," she said. "Not the one by the parking lot."

"Obviously."

"And I want to watch a movie after. A bad one. Something with explosions."

Daniel grinned. "Deal."

She slid the ticket stubs into the drawer beneath the takeout menus, where they'd surface again someday, at some other kitchen counter, in some other quiet moment.


Marisol found the shoebox on the top shelf of the hall closet while looking for the good tablecloth. Inside were the ticket stubs, the receipt from the diner on Route 9, the napkin where Deirdre had sketched the layout of a garden they'd never actually planted.

"Twenty years," she said, carrying the box into the kitchen. "You kept the napkin."

Deirdre looked up from the stove, where she was scorching onions the way she always did. "I kept everything. You know this about me."

They'd been arguing pleasantly for a week about how to mark it. Deirdre wanted to drive up to the lake house her cousin rented out, the one with the temperamental water heater. Marisol wanted a real hotel, room service, a bathtub she didn't have to clean afterward. Neither had budged.

"What if we did nothing?" Marisol said, sitting down.

"Nothing."

"Not nothing. Here. We cook something ridiculous, we open the good bottle Frank gave us in 2019 that we keep not opening, and we look at all this." She tapped the shoebox. "And nobody has to drive anywhere or check out by eleven."

Deirdre turned off the burner. She came and sat across the table, pulling the box toward her, and lifted out a photograph: the two of them at a courthouse in Poughkeepsie, Marisol in a green dress, both of them squinting.

"You hated that dress," Deirdre said.

"I loved that dress. I hated the shoes."

"We could invite Robin and Tess."

"We could not."

Deirdre laughed. "Okay. Just us." She set the photo upright against the salt shaker, where it stayed for the rest of the week, and then for the rest of the month, and eventually somebody moved it to the refrigerator door, where it remains.


Mara found the sticky note on the bathroom mirror at 6:40 in the morning: *Ten years. Don't plan anything. I mean it.*

She planned something anyway, but only a little. By the time Desmond came downstairs, she'd set two mugs out and was scrolling through her phone.

"There's a place in Asheville," she said. "Cabin, hot tub, three hours away."

"We went to Asheville for our fifth."

"That's why it's good. Symmetry."

Desmond poured his coffee and leaned against the counter, still in the T-shirt he'd worn to bed, the gray one with the collar going soft. "I had a different idea."

"You said don't plan anything."

"I said *you* shouldn't." He set his mug down. "The house on Delmar. It's for sale again. Open house Sunday."

Mara looked up.

They'd rented the bottom floor of that house for two years, back when Desmond was adjuncting at three schools and Mara was waiting tables and studying for the bar. The radiator clanked. The neighbor practiced trumpet. They'd been broke and mostly happy.

"You want to spend our anniversary at an open house."

"I want to walk through it," he said. "See if the kitchen's still yellow. Then get lunch at that Vietnamese place if it's still there. Then come home."

"That's not a trip."

"No."

She turned the phone face-down on the counter. Outside, someone's sprinkler kicked on.

"The Vietnamese place closed," she said. "During the pandemic. I drove past in March."

Desmond absorbed this. "Then we find somewhere else."

"Okay." She picked up her coffee. "But we're getting the cabin in October. My birthday."

"Deal."

Sunday, the kitchen was white now, and smaller than either of them remembered. The realtor followed them room to room, talking about updates. Mara found the pencil marks still on the pantry doorframe — not theirs, someone else's kids — and stood there a while, and Desmond came and stood with her, and neither of them said anything, which was fine.


Marcus found the receipt in the junk drawer while looking for batteries—a faded slip from Delgado's Hardware, dated fifteen years ago that March. A gallon of primer, two rollers, painter's tape.

"You kept this?" he asked, holding it up when Priya came in with the mail.

She set the envelopes on the counter and squinted. "That's the first weekend after closing. When we painted the living room that horrible sage green."

"You picked that color."

"I picked it because you said you didn't care." She took the receipt from him, turning it over. "Fifteen years. God."

They'd talked about doing something for the anniversary of the house—a stupid thing to celebrate, Marcus had argued initially, since their wedding anniversary was in September and that seemed like enough. But the house had been the harder thing. The mortgage they'd barely qualified for. The roof that failed in year three. The room upstairs they'd converted twice, first into a nursery and then, after the second miscarriage, into an office neither of them used much.

"We could go out," Priya said. "That place on Whitmore."

"We could." He leaned against the counter. "Or."

"Or what?"

"The dining room still has that sage green. Behind the hutch."

She laughed. "You want to spend our anniversary painting?"

"I want to spend it finishing something." He shrugged. "But I'll take the restaurant if you'd rather."

Priya looked at the receipt again, then at the doorway to the dining room, where a strip of the old color showed like a geological layer.

"Both," she said. "Paint Saturday, dinner Saturday night. We'll show up smelling like latex and they'll seat us by the kitchen."

"Deal."

She stuck the receipt to the fridge with a magnet from a pizza place that had closed years ago. It stayed there through the summer.


Every year, Dana bought the flowers before Marcus could remember to. This year he beat her to it—tulips, not roses, because roses had never been their thing.

"Fifteen," she said, setting her keys in the ceramic dish by the door. The dish had been a wedding gift from her aunt, chipped now on one side.

"Fifteen." Marcus was at the kitchen table with a legal pad, which meant he was making a list. He'd been making lists since 2009. "So I've got three options. One, that Portuguese place downtown. Two, we drive out to the lake, do the cabin thing. Three—" He tapped the pen. "Three is unconventional."

"Three's usually the good one."

"Three is we don't go anywhere. We make the lasagna. The bad lasagna, from the first apartment, with the wrong cheese."

Dana laughed and pulled out the chair across from him. "It wasn't bad. It was ambitious."

"It was ricotta-free."

"Because you were convinced cottage cheese was the same thing."

"I was twenty-six."

She looked at him a moment—the reading glasses he still refused to wear in public, the gray coming in at his temples like it had been applied by hand. Fifteen years of watching a face change so slowly you only notice in photographs.

"Do we still have the pan?" she asked.

"We still have the pan. It's the good pan now. It got promoted."

"Then that's the one." She took the pen from him and crossed out options one and two, drawing a small star beside three. "But we're doing it right. Wrong cheese, cheap wine, that terrible playlist you made."

"I stand by that playlist."

"You stand by a lot of things."

He caught her hand before she could pull it back and held it against the legal pad, over the crossed-out lines, and neither of them said anything for a while, which after fifteen years was its own kind of conversation.


Marcus found the shoebox on the top shelf of the hall closet, behind the winter hats. Inside were ticket stubs, a dried corsage, and the receipt from the diner on Fifth where he and Elena had eaten pancakes at two in the morning after their courthouse wedding.

"Twenty years," Elena said from the doorway. She was still in her work clothes, blazer draped over one arm. "You're going through the box again."

"I was looking for the extension cord."

"Sure you were."

They ended up on the living room floor with the contents spread between them, the way they'd done every few years since they bought the house. Elena held up a Polaroid of the two of them standing in front of a rented U-Haul, both impossibly thin, Marcus with a mustache he'd since agreed to never speak of.

"So what are we doing?" he asked. "Real question. Kids are at your mother's that whole weekend."

Elena had been thinking about it for a month. There was the resort in Asheville that her coworker kept recommending, and there was the flight to Lisbon they'd talked about for a decade and never booked.

"I want to go to the diner," she said.

Marcus looked up.

"It's still there. I checked. Different owners, but the sign's the same. I want to order pancakes at two in the morning and then come home and sleep in our own bed."

"That's it? That's the whole plan?"

"We could stop at that hardware store you like on the way back. The one with the good hinges."

Marcus laughed, then didn't say anything for a moment. Outside, a car door slammed somewhere down the block.

"Okay," he said. "But I'm buying you the corsage this time. A real one."

Elena put the Polaroid back in the box and closed the lid.

"Deal."


The Twentieth

Dana found the box while looking for the good scissors—a shoebox of receipts, ticket stubs, a folded diner napkin with her own handwriting on it: *ask him about the dog.*

"Ray," she called. "Come look at this."

He came in from the garage with sawdust on his forearms and squinted at the napkin. "That was the second date. You wanted to know if I'd ever had a dog, and I lied and said yes because you were wearing that green coat."

"You lied about a dog."

"I contained multitudes." He sat down on the edge of the bed, which creaked the way it had creaked for eleven years. "So. Twenty."

They had talked around it for a month. Her sister thought they should go to Charleston. Ray's cousin had offered a timeshare in Gatlinburg, which was the kind of generosity you had to decline carefully. And there was the roof, which needed doing before winter, and Nora's tuition bill sitting on the counter like a dare.

"I don't want Charleston," Dana said.

"Thank God."

"I want to go back to that diner. If it's still there."

Ray pulled out his phone, thumbed at it a while. "It's a vape shop."

"Of course it is."

He set the phone face down. "There's the place on Route 9 that does the pie. We could get the pie, drive out to the reservoir, sit on the hood like teenagers, come home, and I'll make that pasta you like. And we don't answer the phone."

Dana considered it. It was a small thing. It cost maybe forty dollars.

"Nora will want to come," she said.

"Nora is nineteen and has opinions about her own Saturday."

"Okay." She folded the napkin and put it back in the box. "Okay. But you're buying two pies."

"Two pies," Ray agreed, and went back to the garage.


Marcus found the paint swatches on the kitchen table Saturday morning, fanned out like a poker hand: Heron Gray, Ottoman Blue, something called Salt Cellar.

"We're not repainting the porch for our anniversary," he said.

Dana looked up from her coffee. "Ten years. I want something that lasts longer than a dinner."

"Dinner lasts. It becomes a story. Remember Bellini's? You dropped a mussel shell in my wine glass."

"You drank it anyway."

"I was nervous."

She laughed, and he saw her consider it — the nice restaurant, the babysitter for her mother's dog, the drive into the city. Then she shook her head. "Everything's expensive right now. And I don't want to spend it in traffic."

They'd bought the house in Warren the same spring they married, a 1940s two-bedroom with a porch that sagged on the east side. Marcus had promised to fix it before the first winter. That was nine winters ago.

He picked up Ottoman Blue. "This one's nice."

"You hate blue."

"I hate blue cars. Porches are different."

Dana got out a notepad and they made a list at the table, arguing pleasantly about primer and whether to rent a sander. She wanted to do it over the long weekend in June, when her sister could take the kids to the lake. He wanted to add new spindles, which meant a trip to the lumberyard, which meant it wouldn't be finished in two days.

"So it takes three," she said. "So we sit out there in July with a beer and look at it."

"That's not much of an anniversary."

She reached over and put her hand flat on his forearm, the way she did. "It's ten years of not leaving. The porch is just where we'll be sitting."

He turned his hand over and held hers. Then he wrote *sander* at the top of the list, underlined twice.


Marguerite found the folded pamphlet in the junk drawer, under the takeout menus and dead batteries: a brochure for a state park three hours north, creased soft as cloth. Twenty-five years ago she and Dev had spent their honeymoon there, in a cabin with a woodstove that smoked and a mattress that sloped toward the middle.

"We could go back," she said, holding it up when he came in from the garage.

Dev wiped his hands on a rag. He was fifty-six now, and his knees complained on stairs. "That mattress nearly killed us."

"It brought us together. Literally. We rolled into each other every night."

He laughed and took the brochure, studying it the way he studied everything, thoroughly, longer than necessary. "They've probably renovated. It'll be nice now. Ruined."

"Then we go somewhere else. Or nowhere." She sat at the kitchen table. "I just want it to be something. Not a card and a nice dinner."

They talked it through over the next week — a cruise, too expensive; a trip to see their daughter in Portland, too much like an ordinary visit; a party, which Dev vetoed on principle. What they landed on came from him, on a Tuesday night, apropos of nothing while they were watching the news.

"We should redo the back porch," he said. "Together. Not hire anybody."

Marguerite looked at him.

"We said we'd do it the first summer. Twenty-five years of saying it."

So that was the anniversary: two weeks in June, sawdust in the coffee, arguments about the pitch of the roof, a splinter in her thumb that he dug out with a needle by lamplight. On the last evening they sat in mismatched chairs on new cedar boards, drinking wine out of jam jars because the good glasses were packed away, and neither of them said anything for a long time, which was, they both understood, the point.


Marcus found the calendar page already circled in Priya's handwriting: October 14th, ten years.

"I keep thinking we should do something enormous," he said, leaning in the kitchen doorway while she rinsed rice. "Iceland. Or that restaurant in Chicago with the tasting menu."

"We'd spend the whole time worrying about the dog." Priya shut off the tap. "And you hate tasting menus. You always eat a granola bar in the car afterward."

"That was one time."

"That was every time."

He laughed and came to stand beside her, taking the colander. Outside, the maple in the backyard had gone the color of a struck match. They'd bought the house four years ago, mostly for that tree.

"What if we did the drive," she said. "Route 9, up past Cummington. Where we got lost that first fall."

"With the terrible sandwiches from that gas station."

"They were fine sandwiches. You're a snob."

They talked it through over dinner, the way they talked through most things, circling and doubling back. Marcus wanted to book a room somewhere in case it got late. Priya wanted to leave early enough to stop at the orchard that pressed its own cider. They compromised: leave at seven, cider by nine, room at a bed-and-breakfast in Shelburne Falls if they felt like staying.

"And no phones," Priya said. "Except for pictures."

"You'll last forty minutes."

"I'll last two hours, and you'll be the one checking scores."

On the fourteenth, they drove north with the windows cracked and the heater on, the way they both liked it despite each pretending it was the other's preference. Priya read the road signs aloud in a newscaster voice. Marcus missed the turn for the orchard and didn't mention it for six miles.

They found their way back. They usually did.


Marisol found the notebook while clearing out the hall closet — the cheap spiral one they'd used in 2010 to track expenses down to the dollar, back when they were saving for the down payment. Fifteen years since they'd closed on the house on Bellflower Street.

"Look at this," she said, carrying it into the kitchen where Dev was scraping burnt rice off a pan. "October fourteenth. We wrote 'KEYS!!!' with three exclamation points."

He dried his hands and took it, squinting at his own younger handwriting. "We spent eleven dollars on lunch that day and I remember feeling reckless about it."

The anniversary was two weeks out. They'd talked vaguely about dinner somewhere — the Italian place on Fifth had good reviews — but Marisol kept circling back to the notebook.

"What if we didn't go out," she said. "What if we just — did the day again. The way it actually was."

Dev raised an eyebrow. "Sitting on the floor eating pizza because we had no furniture?"

"We had the two lawn chairs."

"The lawn chairs are in the garage. Under the Christmas stuff."

She was already reaching for her phone to text their daughter that she'd be on her own for dinner that night. Dev watched her, then set the pan down.

"I'll get the chairs," he said. "But I'm ordering from Rosetti's, not the place with the cardboard crust."

"That's not authentic."

"Marisol. I've earned better pizza."

On the fourteenth, they dragged the lawn chairs into the empty half of the dining room and sat facing the wall they'd repainted three times. Dev read the notebook aloud — the tiny purchases, the hopeful arithmetic — and Marisol laughed until her eyes ran.

Later, folding the chairs, he said, "We should do this at twenty."

"Twenty-five," she said. "I want to see if the handwriting still holds up."


Marisol found the box in the hall closet while looking for the good tablecloth. Inside were the paper plates from their wedding reception, the ones with the sunflowers, still wrapped in cellophane because her mother had bought four times too many.

"Twenty years," she said, carrying the box into the kitchen where Devon was scrubbing a pot. "We could use these. Serve dinner on them like it's 2005."

He laughed, drying his hands. "My mother would rise from the grave."

"Your mother loved paper plates. She just pretended not to."

They had been debating for three weeks. Devon wanted to go back to Asheville, to the cabin where they'd spent their honeymoon eating cold pizza because neither of them knew how to work a woodstove. Marisol wanted something that wasn't nostalgia. She'd been reading about a place in Door County with a lighthouse, somewhere neither of them had memories to compete with.

"Here's the thing," Devon said, sitting down at the table. "If we go to Asheville, we're going to spend the whole weekend saying remember when. And I like remembering. But I don't want that to be the whole point."

Marisol turned a paper plate over in her hands. "So Door County."

"So Door County, and we take the plates."

"To Wisconsin."

"We eat cheese curds off sunflower plates by a lighthouse. It's stupid enough to remember."

She thought about it. Their son was at college now, the house too quiet in a way she was still adjusting to, and she understood suddenly that Devon had been adjusting too, in his own sideways manner, proposing lighthouses.

"Book it," she said. "The one with the porch."

He was already reaching for his laptop. She put the plates back in the box, but left it on the counter, where she'd see it.


Marguerite found the paint chips on the kitchen counter Tuesday morning, fanned out like a hand of cards: Sage Whisper, Colonial Butter, Rainstorm.

"You've been thinking about the porch again," she said.

Dev looked up from his coffee. "Twenty years in this house next month. Seemed like the thing to do."

She sat down across from him. The porch had been the reason they bought the place—that long sagging front porch on a street in Dayton where every other house had one too, so summer evenings turned into a slow conversation passed down the block. They'd painted it once, badly, the first year, when they were both twenty-nine and thought a Saturday was plenty of time.

"I was going to suggest Charleston," she said.

"We could still do Charleston."

"No, you're right. The porch." She picked up Rainstorm, held it toward the window. "This one. It'd look good against the brick."

They took a Friday off work. Dev borrowed a scraper from his brother-in-law, and Marguerite spent the first two hours on her knees with a wire brush, getting after the balusters, swearing quietly at the previous owners' choice of a glossy enamel that had cracked into a thousand little continents. Dev ran the sander and made a mess of the hydrangeas. By noon they were both gray with dust and arguing pleasantly about whether the ceiling should be haint blue.

It took the whole weekend, longer than they'd planned, the way it always did. Sunday evening they sat on the still-tacky steps with beers, not touching the wet rail, watching the Kowalskis walk their terrier past.

"Twenty years," Dev said.

"We're going to have to do this again in ten."

"I know it."

She leaned into his shoulder. The paint smelled sharp and clean, and the light went long and gold down the street.


Marisol found the shoebox on the top shelf of the hall closet while looking for the good tablecloth. Inside were the ticket stubs — twenty years of them, the movies they'd walked out of, the minor-league games where the beer was overpriced, a folded program from a friend's wedding in Duluth.

"You kept these," she said, carrying the box into the kitchen.

Dev looked up from the stove. He was making the eggs the way he always did on Sundays, too much butter, the pan too hot. "I kept some. You kept the rest. I found half of them in your sock drawer years ago and just consolidated."

They'd been arguing, gently and without heat, about the twentieth anniversary for three weeks. His mother thought they should do a party. Her sister had sent links to resorts in Tulum, all of them featuring couples younger than they'd been at the wedding. Dev had floated the idea of renewing their vows, which Marisol had greeted with a look he described later as *the face you make at a raccoon in the garage*.

"What if we did nothing," she said now, sitting down with the box. "Not nothing. But nothing announced."

He turned the eggs off. "Meaning what."

"Meaning we drive to Ashland. Stay at that motel with the bad paintings. Walk on the beach in coats because it'll be forty degrees. Eat at the place with the whitefish."

Dev thought about it. Twenty years ago they'd stopped in Ashland on the way to somewhere else, and it had rained, and they'd been broke, and it had been one of the best three days of his life.

"We'd have to get someone for the dog," he said.

"Rachel owes us."

"Then yes." He set two plates down. "Yes. Absolutely yes."

Marisol closed the shoebox and put it on the chair beside her, where it stayed all through breakfast.


Marisol found the shoebox while looking for the winter blankets. Inside: ticket stubs, a dried corsage gone brown, and the receipt from the diner on Route 9 where they'd eaten pancakes at two in the morning after their courthouse wedding.

"Twenty years," she said, carrying it into the kitchen where Deb was scrubbing the burnt bottom of a saucepan. "Twenty years next Thursday."

Deb dried her hands. "I know. I've been thinking about it."

They'd talked, vaguely, about a trip. Something big. Deb's sister kept sending links to resorts in Tulum with infinity pools and swim-up bars, and Marisol had dutifully clicked through them, imagining herself in a linen dress she didn't own.

"What were you thinking?" Marisol asked.

"Honestly?" Deb leaned against the counter. "I want to go back to the diner."

Marisol laughed, then realized she wasn't joking. "It's a four-hour drive."

"So we drive four hours. We get pancakes. We stay at that motel with the terrible landscape paintings."

"The one with the ice machine that screamed."

"It probably still screams."

Marisol turned the corsage over in her fingers. She thought about the resort photos, all that turquoise, and how neither of them had ever been the kind of people who lay still on a beach. Deb got restless. Marisol got sunburned.

"We should invite people," Marisol said slowly. "Not to the diner. After. A cookout, when we get back. Your sister, the Feldmans, Junie and her kids."

Deb considered it. "Cheaper than Tulum."

"That's not why."

"I know it's not why." Deb kissed her temple on the way to the fridge. "Pancakes Thursday. Cookout Saturday. Somebody's going to make me talk about how we met."

"You love telling that story."

"I love your version," Deb said. "Mine's boring."

Marisol put the corsage back in the box, and left the box on the table where they'd both see it.


Ellen found the box of Christmas lights in the garage while looking for something else entirely, and by the time Marcus came home from the clinic, she had strung half of them along the porch railing.

"It's April," he said, setting down his bag.

"I know what month it is." She didn't turn around. "Twenty years ago tomorrow, you drove me to Bar Harbor in that terrible Corolla."

He remembered. The heater had only worked on the passenger side, so she'd spent four hours with her feet on the dashboard while he shivered. They'd eaten lobster rolls in the parking lot because the restaurant had a two-hour wait and neither of them had wanted to spend the money anyway.

"I thought we said no fuss this year," Marcus said, but he was already reaching for the tangle of lights she'd abandoned on the steps.

"This isn't fuss. This is ambiance."

They worked in the blue evening light, arguing mildly about whether the lights should drape or hang straight. Ellen won, as she generally did in matters of aesthetics. Marcus won the argument about dinner—he wanted to cook, she wanted to go out—by pointing out that the Thai place was closed Mondays.

Over pad see ew that Marcus made too spicy on purpose, because that was how she liked it, they talked about whether to drive up to Maine again that summer. The Corolla was long gone. So was the apartment on Fifth Street, and the cat, and Ellen's mother, and the version of themselves who'd thought four hours was a long way to go for a sandwich.

"We could just stay here," Ellen said. "Sit on the porch. Look at your lights."

"They're your lights."

"They're our lights, Marcus." She topped off his wine. "That's the whole point."

He conceded it. Outside, the porch glowed, faintly ridiculous, entirely theirs.


Marisol found the ticket stubs while cleaning out the junk drawer — two faded rectangles from a 2009 minor league game in Toledo, the night she and Dev had gotten caught in a downpour and stayed anyway, soaked and laughing, until the seventh inning.

"Fifteen years," she said, holding them up when he came in from the garage.

Dev wiped his hands on a rag. "Since we watched the Mud Hens lose in the rain?"

"Since our first date. Which was that. Which you almost canceled."

"I had a midterm."

"You had cold feet."

He took the stubs from her and turned them over, thumbing the perforated edges. They were standing in the kitchen of the house they'd bought four years ago, a squat ranch outside Columbus with a mortgage that still made Marisol's stomach tighten every February. The anniversary was three weeks out.

"We could do the steakhouse," Dev said. "The one Priya's always going on about."

"We could." Marisol pulled out a chair and sat. "Or we could drive up to Toledo."

He looked at her.

"Game's on a Saturday. I checked. Twenty-two dollars a seat."

"That's four hours round trip."

"Three and a half. And there's that Hungarian place on the way, the one with the stuffed cabbage."

Dev sat down across from her. He was quiet for a moment, doing the arithmetic he always did — the dog, the neighbor's kid who'd watch her, whether his back would survive the bleachers.

"We'd have to leave by ten," he said finally.

"Nine-thirty."

"Nine-thirty." He set the ticket stubs on the table between them, squaring them with two fingers. "If it rains, we're not staying."

Marisol smiled. "We're absolutely staying."

He didn't argue. He got up to put the coffee on, and she watched him standing at the counter, and neither of them said anything else about it, because it was settled.


Marisol found the shoebox first, wedged behind the winter coats in the hall closet. Inside were the receipts from that first apartment on Delaware Street—the one with the radiator that clanged like someone trapped in the walls.

"Twenty years," she said, carrying the box into the kitchen where Ellen was slicing peppers for dinner. "Twenty years since we signed that lease."

Ellen set down the knife. "We were so broke. Remember eating rice for a week because we'd spent everything on the deposit?"

"I remember you telling the landlord we were sisters."

"He didn't believe me for a second." Ellen wiped her hands on a dish towel. "So. What do you want to do? Something big?"

They'd talked about Portugal. About a weekend in Chicago, tickets to the symphony, a proper hotel with room service and thick towels. Marisol turned the receipts over in her hands, the ink faded to almost nothing.

"I want to drive out there," she said. "Delaware Street. See if it's still standing."

Ellen laughed, then realized she wasn't joking. "That's four hours."

"Four hours each way. We'd get sandwiches. I'd make you listen to that terrible mixtape—the one you pretended to like."

"I did like it. Two songs on it."

They left on a Saturday in October, the maples along the highway burning orange. The building was still there, though someone had painted the trim an unfortunate teal. They stood on the sidewalk a long time, not saying much. A young man came out with a laundry basket and gave them a curious nod.

"Second floor," Ellen said finally, pointing. "That window."

On the drive home they stopped at a diner neither of them remembered, ate pie, and argued cheerfully about whether the radiator had clanged or hissed. Marisol paid the bill and kept the receipt.


Marisol found the shoebox while looking for the good scissors. Inside: ticket stubs, a dried corsage, and the receipt from the diner where she and Theo had eaten pancakes at two in the morning the night they got engaged.

"Ten years," she said, holding up the receipt when he came in from the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. "Four dollars and eighty cents. You tipped a dollar."

"I was broke."

"You were cheap."

He took the receipt, squinted at the faded ink, and set it on the counter like it was something breakable. "So what do you want to do? Marco keeps saying we should go to Napa. He and Deb went for their fifteenth."

Marisol made a face. "We'd spend the whole time worrying about the dog. And you'd complain about the drive."

"I would complain about the drive," Theo admitted.

They ended up sitting at the kitchen table with a legal pad, which was how they made most decisions. Theo wrote *Napa* and crossed it out. He wrote *Chicago—weekend?* and left it. Marisol suggested the cabin in Wisconsin where they'd spent their second anniversary, before Theo's back went bad and before her mother moved in downstairs for those eighteen months.

"I liked that place," he said. "The stove that didn't work."

"You fixed the stove."

"I fixed it badly."

She wrote *cabin* underneath *Chicago* and drew a box around it. Then, after a moment, she wrote *diner* and underlined it twice.

Theo looked at her.

"It's still there," she said. "I drove past it in March. Same sign."

So that was it: pancakes at two in the morning, if they could stay awake that long, and the cabin the following weekend if the rental was free. Theo tore off the page and stuck it to the refrigerator under a magnet shaped like Wisconsin.

"Ten years," he said.

"Tip better this time."


Marisol found the shoebox while clearing the closet, and inside it was the receipt from the diner on Route 9, folded soft as cloth. Ten years. She brought it to the kitchen where Daniel was scraping burnt edges off the toast.

"We could go back," she said, holding it up.

He squinted at the faded ink. "That place closed in 2019. It's a vape shop now."

"Right." She set the receipt on the counter between them like a card played in a game neither of them had agreed to yet.

They'd talked about a trip—Charleston, maybe, or the cabin in the Poconos that Daniel's coworker kept recommending. But the transmission had gone out in March, and Marisol's mother needed the driveway shoveled every other week now, and somehow the whole spring had passed in a series of small necessary things.

"What if we just did the drive?" Daniel said. "Not the diner. The drive. Route 9 down to the water, that stretch with the antique places."

"We'd get there by noon."

"So we get there by noon."

They left on a Saturday with coffee in travel mugs and no reservations. Marisol read aloud from a paperback she'd found at a yard sale, badly, doing voices, until Daniel laughed hard enough to miss the turn for Freehold. They stopped at a farm stand and bought peaches they didn't need. At the shore they walked out on the pier and Daniel took a photograph of her that came out blurry, her hair across her face, and she said keep it, that's the one.

Coming home the traffic knotted up outside Old Bridge. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he let her.

"Ten years," she said.

"Ten years."

Neither of them said anything else for a while. It seemed like enough.


Miriam found the calendar note on a Tuesday, though she hadn't needed the reminder. Twenty-five years since the closing on the house—not their wedding anniversary, which fell in June, but the day they'd signed the papers on the crooked little bungalow in Dayton with the sycamore out front.

"We could do the restaurant," Dev said that evening, rinsing lentils at the sink. He'd made dal every Thursday for two decades, a habit that outlasted his mother, who taught it to him over the phone the first year they lived here.

"We always do the restaurant."

He turned. "You have something in mind."

She did. She'd been thinking about the sycamore, which had dropped a limb in March and now leaned in a way the arborist called "a decision you'll want to make." Miriam had been avoiding the decision for six months.

"I want to plant something," she said. "Before we take the old one down. So there's overlap. So it isn't just a stump for ten years."

Dev dried his hands. He thought about the tax refund, the roof they'd been saving toward, the fact that they'd be seventy-two and seventy-four when a new tree amounted to anything.

"A red maple," he said. "They come in fast."

They spent the anniversary Saturday at a nursery outside Springfield, arguing gently about caliper size while a teenager loaded the balled root into their trunk. Back home they took turns with the shovel—Dev's knees, her shoulder—and got it in the ground by four, mulched badly, watered too much.

That night they ate on the porch. The new maple stood twelve feet and looked absurd beside the sycamore's ruined crown.

"Ridiculous," Miriam said.

"Give it a year."

She leaned into him. Above them, the old tree let go of a leaf, and then another, the way it did every fall, without ceremony.


Marisol found the folder in the filing cabinet while looking for the water bill: twenty-five years of receipts from the same diner in Wheeling, one for every March 14th, curling and faded, the ink on the oldest ones gone brown.

"You kept these," she said, carrying the folder into the kitchen where Dennis was scraping burnt cheese off a pan.

"I keep everything. You've seen the garage."

"Twenty-five." She spread them on the counter like a hand of cards. "The Alpine's closed now. Has been since the pandemic."

Dennis dried his hands. He was quiet in the way she'd learned to read over two and a half decades—not absent, just working something over. "We could drive out anyway. Look at the building."

"That's morbid."

"It's a little morbid." He picked up the oldest receipt, 1999, $14.62, two coffees and the special. He'd been twenty-six, she'd been twenty-eight, and they'd argued the whole way there about whether her mother would come to the wedding. She had, eventually, in a mint-green dress, crying.

Marisol filled the kettle. "What if we cooked it ourselves? The special. What was it—"

"Chicken fried steak. Green beans out of a can."

"God, it was terrible food."

"It was terrible food," he agreed. "That was the point. We were broke."

They settled on it over tea: they'd make the whole miserable meal at home, canned beans and all, and eat it on the good plates her aunt had left them. Dennis wanted to invite the kids. Marisol said no, just them, and he didn't push, which she appreciated.

On the fourteenth he burned the steak slightly, which felt correct. Marisol lined the twenty-five receipts down the center of the table like a runner. They ate the bad food slowly, and afterward Dennis washed and she dried, and neither of them said anything much, and that was fine.


Marguerite found the receipt in a shoebox of tax documents, faded to near-illegibility: dinner for two at a Cuban place in Tampa, October 12th, twenty-five years ago. Sixteen dollars and forty cents, including the flan they'd split because neither could commit to a whole one.

"We should go back," she said, holding it up when Desmond came in from the garage.

He wiped his hands on a rag and squinted at it. "That place closed. Sylvia told me. It's a vape shop now."

"Then not that." She set the receipt on the counter and smoothed it flat, the way she did with everything. "But something. Twenty-five feels like it wants acknowledging."

Desmond leaned against the doorframe. He was thinking about the money—the water heater had gone in August, and Nadia's tuition was due in January. He didn't say it. Marguerite knew anyway; she'd been reading his silences for a quarter century.

"We could drive down," he said. "Not stay anywhere fancy. Get a motel by the water, walk around, eat somewhere that isn't a vape shop."

"Two nights?"

"Two nights."

She considered. "I want to see the apartment building. On Bayshore. If it's still there."

"It's still there. I looked once, on the computer."

That surprised her—that he'd looked, that he hadn't mentioned it. She turned to hide her face and busied herself with the kettle.

They went in the second week of October. The building was still there, painted a different color, a beige that Desmond called an insult. They stood across the street and Marguerite pointed out which balcony had been theirs, and they argued mildly about whether it was the third or the fourth, and settled on the third.

At dinner they ordered flan, one, two spoons.

"Some things hold," she said.

Desmond touched her hand across the table.


Marcus found the shoebox while looking for the good extension cord. Inside: ticket stubs, a receipt from the diner on Fifth, and the napkin where Priya had written her number in 2009, the ink gone brown.

"You kept this," he said, holding it up in the kitchen doorway.

Priya looked over from the counter, where she was rinsing rice. "I kept all of it. Fifteen years is a lot of paper."

They'd been going back and forth about the anniversary for weeks. Her sister had offered to take the kids for a weekend, which felt like a gift too large to waste on something ordinary. Marcus had floated a cabin in the Poconos. Priya had countered with a hotel downtown, somewhere with room service and a bathtub that didn't have a rubber duck stuck to it.

"What if we don't go anywhere," she said now, shaking water off her hands.

"You want to stay here? With the dishwasher that sounds like a helicopter?"

"I want to cook the thing we couldn't afford to make. Remember? That braised lamb from the Zuni cookbook, and we did the math and it was thirty-eight dollars for the meat alone."

Marcus laughed. "We ate spaghetti for a week after Christmas that year."

"So we make it. We open the wine your brother gave us that's been in the closet since the wedding. We put on the terrible playlist." She paused. "And nobody's here. That's the part that's worth something."

He thought about the cabin, the drive, the checking in and out. Then he thought about their own table, the one they'd sanded and stained badly the first summer in the house, and the two of them at it with no one else in the building.

"Thirty-eight dollars," he said. "In this economy, probably ninety."

"We'll survive it."

He put the napkin back in the box. "Saturday, then."


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a container of rice she couldn't remember making.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the beans in the colander and the oven preheating.

"Chicken again?" he said, not really complaining, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Chicken and rice. Unless you want to go get something."

"No, I'm too tired to get something." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, then reached around her for the cutting board. "You want me to do the beans?"

"With the garlic. Not too much this time."

"There's no such thing as too much."

"There was Tuesday."

He laughed and got out the good pan, the heavy one his mother had given them, and started smashing cloves with the flat of the knife. Dana pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the shreds into a baking dish, then poured the rice over it and added a splash of broth so it wouldn't dry out.

They didn't talk much while it cooked. The kitchen radio was tuned to the classical station, which neither of them particularly liked but neither bothered to change. Marcus checked his phone twice and put it face-down on the counter.

They ate at the table, which they did on purpose, because Dana's parents had always eaten in front of the television and she had decided years ago that they wouldn't. The beans were good. The chicken was fine.

"Your sister called me," Marcus said.

"About the thing in August?"

"About the thing in August."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow."

He nodded and reached for more beans. Outside it had already gotten dark.


The rain had started around four, so Dana came in the back door with wet shoulders and set the grocery bag on the counter. "They were out of the good sausage," she said. "I got the turkey kind."

Marcus was at the sink, rinsing a colander of green beans. "That's fine. Nobody will know."

"You'll know. You'll say something about it at the table."

He laughed and shook water off his hands. She unpacked the bag: sausage, a jar of pasta sauce, a bag of shredded parmesan that had a coupon sticker on it. The pot on the back burner was already going, lid rattling.

"Penne or the shells?" she asked, digging in the cabinet.

"Shells. The penne's from that box that's been open since Christmas."

"That's not a real problem."

"It's a little bit of a problem."

She used the shells. Marcus sliced the sausage on the diagonal and got it browning in the cast iron, and the kitchen filled up with that smell that always made him hungry faster than he expected. Dana turned on the small light over the stove and the big one off, which was her preference and something he'd stopped arguing about years ago.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining table had a laptop and a stack of mail on it. Marcus ate a bite and nodded.

"It's fine," he said.

"You paused."

"I didn't pause. It's fine. It's a little sweeter."

"That's the sauce. That's not the sausage."

He conceded the point with a shrug and reached for the parmesan. Outside the rain got heavier, then let up. Dana told him about a coworker who was quitting, probably, and Marcus said he thought she'd been saying that for a year. They finished at almost the same time. He washed, she dried, and the beans nobody had eaten went into a container for tomorrow.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking into the refrigerator at half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, and a container of rice she couldn't remember making.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Fine by me," Mark said. He came in unwinding his scarf, kissed the side of her head, and dropped his keys in the bowl on the counter, where they slid off and hit the floor. He picked them up and set them back more carefully.

She pulled the chicken apart with two forks while he ran water over the green beans and snapped the ends off, tossing them into the compost bin under the sink. The bin needed emptying. Neither of them mentioned it.

"There's that sesame oil," he said. "The good one."

"Use it on the beans."

He heated the skillet too hot and the garlic went dark fast, filling the kitchen with a smell that was almost but not quite burning. Dana opened the window over the sink two inches. Outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing.

They ate at the table because they had agreed, in January, to stop eating in front of the television. It had mostly held. Mark told her about a coworker who kept scheduling meetings at four-thirty on Fridays. Dana told him her mother had called twice and left no message either time.

"You should call her back."

"I will. Tomorrow."

The rice was drier than it should have been. Mark added soy sauce and passed her the bottle without her asking. The beans were good, blistered and salty.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and when the last pan was in the rack she leaned against him for a second, and then went to find her phone.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came in through the garage door, still holding her badge lanyard in her teeth while she shrugged out of her jacket.

"There's chicken thawed," Marcus said. He was at the sink with the colander, running cold water over the broccoli. "Or there was chicken thawed. It's been on the counter since noon."

Dana leaned over and sniffed it, made a face that was mostly performance. "It's February. The house is fifty-eight degrees. It's fine."

"The house is sixty-six."

"It feels like fifty-eight." She got the cast iron down from the hook, then thought better of it and put it back, taking the nonstick instead. "I don't want to scrub anything tonight."

He didn't argue. He chopped the broccoli into pieces that were too big and she didn't mention it, the way he hadn't mentioned that she'd let the chicken sit out. She salted it hard, both sides, and got the pan smoking while he pulled the soy sauce and the sesame oil off the lazy Susan and lined them up by the stove like surgical instruments.

"Rachel called about Saturday," he said.

"Called or texted?"

"Called. Which is how I know she wants something."

"She wants us to watch the dog."

"She wants us to watch the dog."

The chicken hissed. Dana turned it once, too early, and it stuck, and she scraped it up with the spatula and said nothing. Marcus tossed the broccoli in beside it and put the lid on and they stood there together in the steam, not touching, his hip against the oven handle.

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one end. It came out fine — a little dry, plenty of it. He got up halfway through for the sriracha and brought her the water pitcher without being asked.

"Saturday's fine," she said.

"I already told her yes."

"I know you did."


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator in her work clothes, holding the door with her hip, and took inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, three eggs, a lemon that had hardened into something like a wooden ornament.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the front door.

"We had that Monday," Peter said. He came into the kitchen still wearing his jacket and looked over her shoulder, as if a fourth option might reveal itself. "Fine. Chicken and rice."

He put on the rice while she trimmed the beans, snapping the ends off in a small pile she pushed toward the compost bin they'd started using in March and mostly remembered. The kitchen was narrow enough that they had to negotiate, and they did it without talking about it—she stepped back when he needed the drawer, he lifted his elbow when she reached past for the olive oil.

"Did you call about the dishwasher?" she asked.

"I left a message. They said Thursday, maybe."

"They said Thursday last week."

"I know." He shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the cutting board. "There's still some of that mustard sauce."

They ate at the table because Dana liked to, even on a Wednesday, even when the news would have been fine in the background. Peter poured half a beer into a glass and drank the rest from the bottle without noticing he'd done it. The beans were slightly overdone, softer than either of them preferred, and neither said so.

"This is good," he said, and meant it.

She told him about a coworker's baby shower she didn't want to attend. He told her about a parking ticket. When they were done, he washed and she dried, because the dishwasher was still broken, and it took eleven minutes.


Marcus got home first, which meant he decided. He stood in front of the open refrigerator with his tie loosened, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, the heel of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" he called out when he heard the front door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Dana came into the kitchen still holding her keys, peering over his shoulder. She reached past him and pulled the beans out. "These are on their way out."

"I saw."

"So use them tonight." She set them on the counter and went to hang up her coat.

He put the rice on—the good pot, the one with the tight lid—and started pulling meat off the carcass with his fingers while the water came up. Dana came back in wearing sweatpants and washed the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a colander. They worked around each other in the narrow galley, a choreography they'd figured out over eleven years: she stepped back, he reached for the olive oil, she moved to the stove.

"Do we have soy sauce?"

"Behind the vinegar."

She fried the beans hard in a skillet with garlic, which was how her mother did it, and Marcus warmed the chicken in a little broth so it wouldn't dry out. They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room table had bills on it. Dana had the news on her phone, propped against the salt shaker, until Marcus said, "Please," and she turned it face down.

"Sorry."

"How was the thing with Kevin?"

"He's an idiot. But it's fine now." She pointed her fork at the beans. "These came out good."

"You always overcook them."

"I like them overcooked."

He did the dishes. She dried, badly, and put things in the wrong cabinets, and he moved them later without saying anything.


Dana got home first, which meant she chose the music—something with a lot of piano—and started the rice. The bag said twenty minutes but she'd learned it was closer to twenty-five in their apartment, something about the old stove running cool.

Marcus came in at six-fifteen, dropped his keys in the ceramic dish his sister had made, and looked in the fridge.

"There's chicken thighs," Dana said. "The ones from Sunday."

"Are they still good?"

"They're four days old."

He sniffed them anyway, then shrugged and set them on the counter. He was better at the actual cooking, so she moved aside and let him take the pan. She got out the sesame oil, the soy sauce, the honey that had crystallized around the lid.

"We should get new honey," she said.

"It's fine. Run it under hot water."

There was half a bag of green beans in the crisper drawer, going a little limp. Marcus trimmed them with the paring knife while Dana rinsed a colander of them, and they had the mild argument they always had about whether to blanch first. She won because she was standing at the sink.

The chicken sizzled. Marcus turned the fan on and it groaned. They ate at the small table by the window, the one that wobbled, with plates on their laps for balance—no, that was last apartment. This table was fine.

"How was the meeting?" she asked.

"They pushed it to Thursday."

"Of course they did."

He nodded, chewing. The rice was slightly wet. Neither of them mentioned it. Outside, someone was trying to parallel park and failing, and they both watched for a while without commenting, forks moving.

Afterward Marcus washed and Dana dried, because that was the arrangement, and then they put on the show they were halfway through and she fell asleep before the second episode.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs and half a bag of green beans, doing the math on how tired she was.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the oven preheating and the thighs laid skin-side up on a sheet pan.

"It smells like nothing in here," he said, hanging his keys on the hook.

"Give it twenty minutes."

He washed his hands and took over the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a colander. "Did you use the good olive oil?"

"I used the olive oil."

"That's a no."

"It's a Tuesday," she said. "The good oil is for company."

"We're company." He rinsed the beans and shook the colander over the sink. "Do we have lemons?"

There was one, a little soft on one end. He cut it in half and set it aside, then leaned against the counter while she seasoned the pan—salt, pepper, too much paprika, which was her habit and which he had stopped commenting on around year three.

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table was covered in mail neither of them had sorted. Marcus told her about a meeting that could have been an email. Dana said her sister called, wanting to know about Thanksgiving, and Marcus made a face, and Dana said, "I know," and that was the whole conversation about Thanksgiving.

The chicken was good. The beans were slightly underdone, and Dana ate around the tough ones.

"Next time, less paprika," he said, and she said, "Next time, cook it yourself," and he laughed with his mouth full.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven forty, which felt like getting away with something.


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The measuring cup had gone missing again, so she eyeballed it — a cup and a half, maybe, into the pot — and set the burner to medium while she pulled her hair back with a band from her wrist.

Marcus came in at ten after six, still in his work boots, and stopped just inside the door to unlace them.

"Chicken thighs are almost thawed," she said. "I put them in a bowl of water."

"Skin on?"

"Skin on."

He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, which she hated and had told him she hated, but she let it go tonight. He patted the thighs dry with paper towels while she found the sheet pan, the good one, the one that wasn't warped.

"Do we have any of that lemon pepper left?"

She checked. "No. There's the garlic stuff."

"Garlic's fine."

The oven wasn't preheated, so they stood there a minute with the seasoned chicken sitting on the pan between them, and Marcus told her about a guy at work who'd backed a forklift into a stack of pallets. She laughed in the wrong place, distracted, watching the rice, and he said, "You didn't hear a word of that."

"I heard forklift."

At 6:40 the chicken went in. She microwaved a bag of frozen green beans and stirred in butter and salt and too much pepper, and Marcus tasted them off the spoon and said they were good, actually, better than usual.

They ate at the table because Dana had asked for that a few months ago, no phones, and mostly they kept to it. The chicken skin was crisp in places and flabby in others. Marcus ate two thighs and half of hers.

"Same thing tomorrow?" he said.

"There's leftover rice."

"Rice and something."

He rinsed; she loaded. It took nine minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, she had water heating and the beans dumped in the colander.

"It smells like nothing in here," he said, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"That's because nothing has happened yet." She handed him the lemon. "Zest that. Or don't, actually. Just cut it in half."

He rinsed the beans while she pulled chicken off the bone with her fingers, dropping the good pieces into a bowl and the skin onto a paper towel. The pasta water started to hiss over the edge of the pot and she lowered the burner without looking.

"There's that garlic bread in the freezer," he said.

"That's from March."

"Bread doesn't go bad in a freezer."

"Everything goes bad in a freezer." But she nodded at it anyway, and he set the oven to 400 and stood there while it preheated, scrolling on his phone, reading her a headline she didn't respond to.

They ate at the table because Dana liked to, though the television was audible from the other room where Marcus had left it on. She squeezed lemon over her beans. He salted everything twice.

"This is good," he said. "This is better than it should be."

"That's the lemon."

He told her about the meeting that got moved, and then moved again, and she told him her sister had called about Thanksgiving, and they agreed to think about it and not decide tonight. He got up for a second piece of garlic bread and brought her one too, without asking, which was correct.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and it took eleven minutes, and then the kitchen was quiet again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, scanning: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the beans in a colander and a pot of water heating.

"Pasta?" he asked, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Chicken and beans. And rice, if you want to make it."

"I want to make it." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink instead of the bathroom, which annoyed her mildly and always had, for eleven years. He measured rice into the little pot they'd gotten at a yard sale in Ohio.

"Two cups of water?"

"One and a half. It says on the bag."

"The bag lies."

"The bag has never lied."

He used one and three-quarters, splitting the difference, and she let it go. She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, laying the pieces in a pan with olive oil to warm through. The beans went in after, with salt and a squeeze of the lemon, and she covered them so they'd steam.

Marcus set the table. Two plates, forks, the water glasses. He asked about her afternoon and she told him about the printer, and the woman in accounting who kept calling her Diane.

"For how long?"

"Four years."

"You have to correct her."

"It's gone past correcting."

The rice came out fine. They ate at the kitchen table with the overhead light on because they'd never gotten around to buying a lamp for that corner. He said the beans were good. She said they were about to go bad. He said that was often when things were best.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-thirty.


Marcus got home first, which meant he decided. He stood in front of the open refrigerator until the cold reached his shins, then pulled out a package of chicken thighs and the half-bag of green beans they'd bought Sunday.

By the time Priya came in, shaking rain off her jacket, he had the oven at 425 and the beans on a sheet pan.

"That's it?" she said, not unkindly, peering over his shoulder.

"There's rice."

"Did you start it?"

He had not started it. She rinsed the rice in a mesh strainer while he salted the chicken, and they moved around each other in the narrow kitchen with the choreography of nine years, one stepping back when the other opened a drawer.

"Sanjay called," she said. "He wants to know if we're driving up for Diwali or flying."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I'd ask you. Flying's four hundred each."

"Driving's eight hours."

"Nine, with stops."

Marcus tipped olive oil over the beans and used his hands to toss them. "Let's drive. We can split it."

"You always say that and then you sleep through Pennsylvania."

He laughed. The oven beeped and he slid the pan in, then wiped his palms on the dish towel hanging off the stove handle, which she hated, because it was the drying towel.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which happened maybe twice a week. Priya had opened a bottle of wine on Tuesday and there was a glass and a half left, so they split it. The chicken skin was good, crisp and salty; the beans were slightly burnt at the tips, which they both preferred.

"This is fine," she said. "This is a good dinner."

"It's chicken."

"I'm saying I like it."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-forty.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

"Chicken again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd taken his shoes off in the hall, the way he always did, and his socks didn't match.

"Chicken again. Or we drive to the store."

"Chicken's fine." He came around behind her and reached past her shoulder for a beer, then didn't open it, just set it on the counter and rolled up his sleeves. "I'll do the beans."

She pulled the chicken apart with her hands while he snapped the ends off the green beans, dropping them into the compost bin under the sink. The kitchen radio was on the classical station because neither of them had bothered to change it in weeks. He salted the water before it boiled, which she'd told him didn't matter, and she let it go.

"There's rice from Tuesday," she said.

"Is it still good?"

"It's four days old."

"That's still good."

She microwaved it in the plastic container with a wet paper towel over the top, the way his mother had shown her years ago. The green beans came out a little squeaky. They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, with the mail pushed to one side.

"Melissa's asking about the Fourth," Dana said.

"Do we have to decide tonight?"

"No."

He squeezed lemon over his beans, then over hers without asking, because he knew. They talked about the leak under the bathroom sink, whether it was worth calling someone. Marcus washed; Dana dried. There were two plates, two forks, the pot, and the cutting board, and it took nine minutes.


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The measuring cup had gone missing sometime in October, so she used the chipped coffee mug and eyeballed the water.

Owen came in at ten past six, dropped his bag by the shoe rack, and stood in front of the open fridge the way he always did, as if waiting for it to make a suggestion.

"There's the chicken thighs," Dana said. "They need to go tonight or tomorrow."

"Tonight, then." He pulled out the package and peeled back the plastic. "Do we have that lemon left?"

"Half of one. It's kind of sad."

"Sad is fine."

He got the cast iron going too hot, the way he liked, and she moved to the far end of the counter to escape the spitting oil. She washed the last of the green beans, snapping the ends off into the compost bin, and asked about his afternoon. He said the client had rescheduled again. She said that was the third time. He said he knew.

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table was covered in her sister's wedding invitations, which she had volunteered to address and now resented. The chicken skin came out well. The rice was a little wet.

"More water next time," Owen said, not unkindly.

"I know. The cup's a bad cup."

"We could buy a measuring cup."

"We could." Neither of them wrote it down.

They talked about whether to go to his cousin's thing on Saturday and decided probably yes, briefly. Halfway through, Dana got up to refill her water glass and brought the pitcher back for him too.

He washed; she dried and put away, because she knew where things went. When the counters were wiped, they took the last two beers into the living room and moved the invitations to the floor.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, doing the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach going soft at the edges, three eggs, the block of cheddar with one hard corner.

"Chicken and rice again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd come in through the garage and was toeing off his work boots on the mat, the way she'd asked him to about forty times.

"Or eggs. Fried rice, sort of. I don't know if we have soy sauce."

"We have soy sauce. It's behind the vinegar." He came over and reached past her, and there it was, the bottle crusted brown around the cap.

She started the rice while he chopped the chicken off the bone, standing at the counter with the cutting board that had a warp in it. He kept a small pile of skin to the side for himself, which she pretended not to see. The kitchen radio was on the news, and after a minute he reached over and switched it to the station that played nothing but the eighties.

"That's the third night this week," she said.

"It's a good song."

"It's a Steve Winwood song."

"That's what I said."

The rice took longer than the package promised. Dana wilted the spinach in the pan with too much garlic; Marcus scrambled the eggs into it and broke them up with the edge of the spatula, which she'd told him ruined the finish. They ate at the table because they had a rule about that, though Marcus's phone sat face-down by his water glass.

"This is decent," he said.

"It's fine. It's food."

"No, it's decent." He got up for the hot sauce and brought her the mail on his way back, and she opened the electric bill while it was still hot enough to burn her mouth.


The rain had started sometime during Dana's commute, so she came in through the garage shaking water off her coat while Mark stood at the stove with the burner already on.

"There's chicken thawed," he said. "I was going to do the sheet pan thing but the oven takes forever."

"Just do it in the pan." She hung her coat on the back of a chair instead of the closet, which she knew he'd notice and not mention. "Is there any of that rice left?"

"From Sunday? That's four days."

"Three."

He opened the fridge and sniffed the container, then set it on the counter without a verdict. Dana took over the chicken, cutting the breasts into strips on the plastic board while Mark washed a head of broccoli he'd bought on a whim and had been feeling guilty about all week.

"How was the thing with Rebecca?" she asked.

"She rescheduled. Again."

"Of course she did."

The chicken hissed when it hit the oil. Mark broke the broccoli into florets with his hands, dropping them into a bowl with a splash of water to microwave, which Dana had explained was actually steaming and therefore fine. He got out two plates, then the good soy sauce, then remembered they were out of garlic and said so.

"Use the powder."

"It's not the same."

"It's Thursday."

He used the powder. They ate at the kitchen table with the overhead light on because neither of them got up to turn on the lamp, and the rain kept going against the window over the sink. Dana ate the rice. Mark watched her do it and said nothing.

Afterward she washed and he dried, and he told her about a coworker who'd bought a boat, and she said, "A boat," and they left it there.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, a heel of parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called out when she heard the door.

"Again?" Mark said, but he was already toeing off his shoes. "Fine. Yes. I'm not going to pretend I have a better idea."

He put water on for the rice while she pulled the meat off the bones with her fingers, dropping the carcass into a freezer bag for stock she probably wouldn't make. The green beans she trimmed fast and sloppy, snapping off the stem ends and leaving the tails on.

"Do we have that soy sauce?" she asked.

"Behind the vinegar."

"It's not behind the vinegar."

Mark came over and reached past her shoulder and produced it from behind the vinegar. She made a face at him. He kissed the side of her head and went back to the rice, which was boiling over, hissing on the burner.

"Turn it down," she said.

"I'm turning it down."

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side. The beans were too crunchy in places. Mark salted his food before tasting it, which she had stopped commenting on around year three.

"Your mom called me," he said. "Not you. Me."

"About the tickets?"

"About the tickets. I said we'd figure it out this weekend."

Dana nodded, chewing. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. She got up for the parmesan and grated some over both their plates without asking.

"Trash night," Mark said.

"I know it's trash night."

"I'm just saying it out loud so one of us does it."

Neither of them moved yet. The rice was still warm.


Tuesday, and the light in the kitchen was that flat gray-yellow of late February. Dana got home first, which meant she stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory. Two chicken thighs, a half bag of green beans, a lemon going soft at one end.

"Rice or potatoes?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Rice," Marcus said. He came in unwinding his scarf, kissed the side of her head, and reached past her for a beer. "There's rice, right?"

"There's always rice."

He rinsed a cup of it in the pot, swirling with his fingers, pouring the cloudy water down the drain twice, the way his mother did. Dana salted the chicken and set the cast iron on to heat. They moved around each other without much negotiation, twelve years of it: she took the stove side, he took the sink.

"Chris asked if we want to do Saturday," Marcus said.

"Doing what?"

"He didn't say. Probably that brewery with the dog."

"I don't want to sit outside in forty degrees again." The chicken went into the pan skin-down and complained loudly. Dana turned on the fan, which did approximately nothing.

"That's what I told him. More or less."

She trimmed the green beans while the chicken rendered, tossing the ends into the compost bin on the counter, which needed taking out and would not get taken out tonight. Marcus set the table with two plates and one fork, then noticed and got the second fork.

They ate at the small table by the window with the news muted on the tablet propped against the sugar bowl. The chicken was good. The rice was slightly wet.

"I overdid the water," he said.

"It's fine."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the whole thing had taken forty minutes, and neither of them thought anything of it.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, doing the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, rice in the cupboard.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Again?" Mark said, but he was already toeing off his shoes. "Yeah, fine. Is there any of that peanut sauce?"

There wasn't. She checked anyway, moving jars around, and found instead a bottle of teriyaki with maybe two tablespoons left in the bottom.

"Teriyaki?"

"Sure."

She measured rice into the pot while he shredded the chicken with his fingers, pulling it off the bones and dropping the carcass into the trash bag under the sink. He had opinions about the beans—he wanted them blistered in the cast iron, not steamed—so she handed over the pan and let him do it, and he got the heat too high, the way he always did, and the smoke alarm gave one warning chirp before he waved a dish towel at it.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's smoking."

"It's supposed to."

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table in the living room had a stack of unopened mail on it that neither of them wanted to deal with. The beans were good, actually—dark in spots, salty. Mark drank water from a pint glass. Dana had half a beer left from Friday and drank it flat.

"Your mom called me," she said.

"About the thing in April?"

"About the thing in April."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That I'd talk to you." She pushed rice onto her fork with her thumb. "So. April."

"Let me look at my week," he said, meaning no, or meaning later, and she let it go, and he got up to put the kettle on.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the beans in a colander and the oven preheating.

"Chicken again?" he said, not really complaining.

"You want to go get something?"

"No." He kissed the side of her head and went to change out of his work clothes. When he came back in sweatpants, he took over the beans without being asked, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a bowl. He always left them too long. She'd stopped mentioning it around year three.

"Rice or the potatoes?" she asked.

"Potatoes take forty minutes."

"Rice, then."

He put water on. She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, tearing the meat into rough pieces, then squeezed the lemon over it and slid the pan into the oven just to warm it through. The beans went into a skillet with butter and too much garlic, which was how he liked them.

They ate at the table because Dana had asked, sometime last winter, if they could stop eating on the couch. Marcus had agreed and then mostly remembered.

"Your mother called me," he said.

"Why you?"

"She said your voicemail is full."

"It is." Dana pushed rice onto her fork with her thumb. "What did she want?"

"To know if we're coming at Easter."

"Are we?"

"I said I'd ask you."

She considered it, chewing. "Tell her yes. But we're not staying at the house."

"That's what I told her."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-thirty, and the rest of the evening opened up in front of them, unremarkable and theirs.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans, and half a lemon that had gone hard on one side.

"Chicken?" she called.

Mark was in the entryway, prying off his shoes without untying them. "Sure. Is there rice?"

"There's the last of the jasmine. Maybe a cup and a half."

"That's enough."

She set the oven to 425 and dumped the beans into a colander to rinse. Mark came in, kissed the back of her head, and took over the rice because she always let it boil too hard. He measured water with the side of his finger, which she teased him about and which always worked.

"How was the thing with Priya?" he asked.

"Moved to Thursday. Which is fine, except now Thursday is insane." She patted the thighs dry with a paper towel, salted them, and laid them skin-side up on a sheet pan. The beans went around them with olive oil and too much garlic; she never measured garlic.

"You want the lemon?"

"The lemon's half dead."

"I'll cut around it."

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table had a lamp on it and neither wanted to move the lamp. The chicken skin had gone properly crisp. Mark ate the beans first, all of them, then the chicken, then the rice, in his methodical way that Dana had stopped finding strange around year three.

"This is good," he said.

"It's the same as always."

"It's good the same as always."

She told him about the parking situation at the clinic. He told her his brother had texted about Thanksgiving, and they agreed to think about it later, meaning next week.

Mark washed. Dana dried and put away, because she knew where things went.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the beans rinsed and the oven preheating.

"It's freezing out there," he said, hanging his keys on the hook they'd finally installed in March. "Did you get the mail?"

"I forgot."

"I'll go back down." He didn't move for a moment, just stood there rubbing his hands together, then leaned over to look in the pan. "Beans?"

"And chicken. There's rice in the freezer, the leftover kind."

"I can make fresh."

"That takes twenty minutes."

"So does the chicken." He was already reaching for the pot.

She let him. He rinsed the rice three times in a mesh strainer, the way his mother did, while she tossed the beans with olive oil and too much salt, then scattered them across a sheet pan. They worked around each other in the narrow galley kitchen, a choreography of hips and elbows, Marcus saying "behind you" out of habit even when she'd already stepped aside.

"Did Kelsey text you?" he asked.

"About the baby shower. I said we'd come."

"Both of us?"

"You can not come."

"No, I'll come." He set the lid on the rice and turned the burner down. "Is it going to be one of those where you play games?"

"Probably."

"Okay."

They ate at the table because Dana insisted on it, though the television murmured from the next room where Marcus had left it on. The chicken was dry. The beans were good — blistered, salty. He ate three-quarters of the beans.

"Sorry about the chicken," she said.

"It's Wednesday chicken," he said, and reached for the rice.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, three eggs, a wedge of parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Mark came into the kitchen, setting his laptop bag on a chair he never used for sitting.

"There's enough if you don't have thirds."

He took the beans from her and started snapping the ends off over the trash can, which she'd told him a hundred times was less sanitary than using a bowl. She let it go. The rice cooker was already ticking away with the last of the jasmine rice, and she pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the bones into a bag for the freezer.

"Did you call about the gutter guy?" Mark asked.

"I left a message. He hasn't called back." She washed her hands. "It's been three days."

"He's probably slammed. Everybody's got leaves."

The beans went into a skillet with olive oil and too much garlic, the way Mark liked. Dana grated parmesan while he stood over the pan and moved things around unnecessarily. The kitchen window fogged a little at the bottom.

They ate at the table with the mail pushed to one side. Mark told a long story about a coworker who'd taken credit for something in a meeting, and Dana made the right noises while thinking about whether she needed gas in the morning.

"This is good," he said. "The garlic."

"It's the same as always."

"It's good the same as always."

She got up for the water pitcher. Outside, a car door slammed, and the neighbor's dog started up, and Mark reached over and took the last of her rice.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, the heel of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Marcus came into the kitchen, loosening his tie with two fingers, and looked over her shoulder into the fridge like he might find something she'd missed.

"Enough if we don't get greedy."

He filled the electric kettle, because the rice cooked faster if you started it with hot water — a trick his mother swore by and Dana had never bothered to verify. While the water heated he pulled the beans out of the crisper and started snapping the ends off over the trash can, dropping them in with a soft ticking sound.

Dana shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the counter, and ate a piece straight from the cutting board.

"That's the good part," Marcus said.

"There's more good parts."

The rice went in the pot with a knob of butter and too much salt, which they both preferred. Marcus put the beans in a pan with olive oil and turned the heat up higher than Dana would have, and she didn't say anything, and they came out slightly blistered, which was better.

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side. Marcus told her about a coworker who'd been fired, or possibly had quit, the story unclear even to the people involved. Dana said the word "resigned" carried a lot of weight.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they left the pot to soak because neither of them wanted to scrub it. The whole thing had taken twenty-five minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a heel of Parmesan.

"Pasta?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Sure." Micah came into the kitchen unwinding his scarf. "Is there garlic?"

"There's the jar."

He made a face but didn't argue. He filled the pot and set it on the back burner while she pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the good pieces into a bowl and the skin into the trash. The green beans she trimmed on the cutting board, working fast, snapping off the bad ends.

"How was the thing with Renata?" she asked.

"Postponed. Again." He salted the water without measuring. "She's got a family situation, I guess. It's fine. It gives me the weekend."

"You said that last time."

"I know what I said."

The water took forever. Micah leaned against the counter and scrolled his phone, reading her a headline about a mayor she didn't care about. Dana tossed the beans in a pan with oil and let them sit until they blistered, then added the jarred garlic anyway. He didn't comment.

They ate at the table because Dana insisted on it, though the TV was audible from the next room, some cooking competition Micah had left running. She grated the Parmesan directly over his bowl, too much, and he said nothing about that either.

"This is good," he said, and meant it.

"It's chicken and noodles."

"It's good."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they got through it in eleven minutes, and then she went to fold laundry and he finished the show, and the kitchen light stayed on until almost ten.


Diane got home first, which meant she chose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, considering the half-package of chicken thighs that needed using and the bag of green beans she'd bought optimistically on Sunday.

By the time Peter came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven at 425 and was patting the chicken dry with a paper towel.

"You didn't preheat the pan," he said, hanging his jacket on the hook by the door.

"I'm not doing it your way tonight. I'm doing it the easy way."

"The easy way is worse."

"The easy way is one pan." She slid the sheet pan toward him. "Trim the beans if you want them trimmed."

He washed his hands and did it, snapping the ends off with his thumbnail and dropping them into the compost bin, which needed emptying. Diane salted the chicken heavily and Peter tossed the beans with olive oil in the same bowl she'd used for the chicken, which she pretended not to notice.

They talked about his sister's plans to visit in March, whether the guest room mattress was actually as bad as she'd said, and whether they should just buy a new one. Peter thought they should wait. Diane thought waiting was how they'd ended up with a nineteen-year-old mattress.

The chicken took thirty-five minutes. They ate at the kitchen table with the good plates, because the everyday plates were in the dishwasher, unwashed, from Tuesday.

"This is good," Peter said. "The skin's not crispy, though."

"I know."

"I'm just saying."

"I know you're just saying."

He ate two thighs and both scooped the last beans out of the pan. Afterward, Diane rinsed, Peter loaded, and they ran the dishwasher, which took twenty minutes to argue about the correct arrangement of the bowls.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a wedge of parmesan sealed in plastic.

"Pasta?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Mark set his keys in the bowl and came into the kitchen, loosening his tie the way he always did, like it was choking him. "Is there garlic?"

"There's garlic."

He filled the pot too full, the way he always did, and she said nothing about it. She trimmed the green beans on the cutting board while the water took its time, dropping the ends into the sink. Behind her, Mark shredded chicken off the bone with his fingers, standing over the container so the juice wouldn't drip.

"Todd's leaving," he said.

"Todd who sits by the window?"

"Todd who sits by the window. Going to his brother's company in Charlotte."

"Huh." She scraped the beans into a pan with a little olive oil. "Is that good for you or bad for you?"

"Neither. Just weird." He rinsed his hands. "The office'll be quieter."

The pasta went in. Mark grated the parmesan onto a plate because they couldn't find the little bowl. They ate at the kitchen table, which had a stack of unopened mail on one end that neither of them moved. The beans were better than she expected. Mark ate his chicken first, then his pasta, the way he always did, separately.

"This is good," he said.

"It's fine."

"It's good."

She got up for the pepper. When she sat back down he had already put a second helping on her plate without asking, which was either presumptuous or thoughtful, and she decided, tonight, on thoughtful.


Dana got home first, which meant she chose. She stood in the open refrigerator, letting the cold air work on her neck, and decided on the chicken thighs before they turned.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven at four hundred and was chopping a red onion badly.

"You're murdering that," he said.

"Then take over."

He washed his hands, dried them on the dish towel she'd told him a hundred times was for dishes, and took the knife. She let him. He was faster, and he liked being asked.

"There's half a bag of green beans," she said. "And rice."

"Rice takes twenty minutes."

"So?"

"So the chicken's twenty-five." He said it like a small victory, and started the rice cooker.

She salted the thighs, laid them skin-down in the cast iron to get color, and the kitchen filled with that spitting noise and smell that always made her hungrier than she'd been a minute before. Marcus tossed the beans with oil on a sheet pan, then reached past her for the pepper grinder and she leaned back against him for a second without either of them making anything of it.

They ate at the table because Dana had a rule about it, though the television was audible from the other room where Marcus had left it on the news.

"Your mother called me," he said.

"About the thing in August."

"About the thing in August."

"Tell her yes. I don't want to have three more conversations about it."

He nodded and ate the rest of a chicken thigh with his fingers, which she pretended not to see. The beans were slightly burned on one end of the pan and perfect on the other. She took the burned ones.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-forty.


Diane got home first, so she started the rice. Not the good rice from the Asian market on Route 9, just the bag of long-grain from the pantry, because it was Wednesday and nobody was coming over.

Marcus came in at six-twenty with the mail tucked under his arm and set it on the counter without looking at it. "Did you want the chicken thighs or the ground turkey?" he asked, already opening the fridge.

"Thighs. The turkey's from before we went to your sister's."

He sniffed the package anyway, then dropped it in the trash and got out the chicken. Diane moved sideways to give him the sink. They had worked out this choreography over nine years, the kitchen being narrow, and neither of them thought about it anymore.

"There's broccoli," she said. "It's a little sad but it's fine."

"Sad how?"

"Rubber-bandy. It'll be fine roasted."

He seasoned the thighs with salt, pepper, and the garlic powder, because he had stopped pretending he was going to mince garlic on a weeknight. The oven wasn't preheated. It never was. They stood there for four minutes waiting on it, Marcus scrolling something on his phone, Diane reading the water bill she'd finally picked up.

"It went up eleven dollars."

"Did you water the hydrangea a lot?"

"I watered it normally."

Dinner took thirty-five minutes. They ate at the table, not the couch, which was a rule Diane had instituted in March and Marcus had grudgingly accepted. The chicken skin came out crisp on one side and pale on the other. The broccoli was fine.

"This is good," he said, meaning it in a small way.

"The rice is a little gluey."

"It's fine."

Afterward he washed, she dried, and they left the pan to soak overnight, which they both knew meant morning.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs, half a bag of green beans, and a lemon that had gone slightly soft on one side.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Mark came into the kitchen, set his keys in the bowl, and started running water over the rice in the mesh strainer. He always rinsed it, which Dana thought was unnecessary, and which she had stopped arguing about sometime in their second year of marriage.

She patted the thighs dry with a paper towel and salted them heavily. The skillet went on high, and by the time the oil shimmered, the kitchen already smelled like a place where something was happening.

"Do we have soy sauce still?"

"Door of the fridge. Behind the mustards."

The chicken hissed when it hit the pan. Dana pressed it down with a spatula and left it alone. Mark trimmed the green beans, dropping the stem ends into the compost bin under the sink, and asked her how the meeting went.

"They moved it. Again. Thursday now."

"Of course they did."

He set the beans in a bowl with a splash of water and covered them with a plate, which was how his mother steamed vegetables in the microwave, and which he still preferred to boiling them. Dana flipped the chicken. The skin had gone dark gold and stuck slightly, and she scraped it up carefully.

They ate at the small table by the window, the good part of the day now, plates warm in their hands. Mark squeezed the tired lemon over his beans. Dana ate the crisp skin first, then the meat.

"This is good," he said.

"It's fine." But she was pleased, and he knew it.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and neither of them turned on the television.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator until the cold made her arms prickle, then pulled out a package of chicken thighs and half a bag of green beans that had gone slightly limp at the ends.

"Thighs okay?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Sure." Marcus set his keys in the bowl by the door and came into the kitchen still wearing his jacket. He looked at the counter. "Rice or the potatoes?"

"Potatoes are old."

"They're fine. They're just soft." He picked one up and pressed his thumb into it. "Okay, they're not fine."

"Rice, then."

He filled the pot with water while she trimmed the beans, snapping off the bad ends and dropping them into the sink strainer. The radio was on low, some news program neither of them was listening to. Marcus turned it off without asking and Dana didn't comment.

He seasoned the chicken because he always did it better—more salt than she was comfortable with, paprika, garlic powder shaken directly over the meat. She got the cast iron going and stood back when he laid the thighs down skin-side first, the oil popping.

"Did Ellen ever email you back?"

"About the deck guy? No." He flipped a thigh, checked the color, put it back. "I'll call her tomorrow."

They ate at the table, which was not a given; sometimes they took plates to the couch. The green beans were a little underdone. Dana ate them anyway, alternating with bites of rice, and told him about a woman at work who had brought in a cake for no reason.

"For no reason at all?"

"She said it was a Tuesday."

Marcus laughed with his mouth full. Afterward he washed and she dried, and the skillet went back on the burner to dry out from the heat still in the metal.