Marisol found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and smoothed the folds with her palms while the oven ticked toward 375.

"Do we own eight matching forks?" Dev called from the kitchen. He had flour on his forearm and a dish towel over his shoulder, which meant the bread was proofing and he was already ahead of schedule.

"We own six. Kayla and Tom won't notice."

"Kayla will notice."

"Kayla will notice and say nothing, which is the same as not noticing."

He laughed. She heard the refrigerator open, the clink of beer bottles being rearranged to make room for the salad. They had lived in the house four years, long enough that the kitchen had become his and the front rooms hers, though neither had ever said so out loud. It had happened the way most things between them happened, by accumulation.

Marisol lit the candles at six-fifteen, blew out the first one because it smelled too much like vanilla, and swapped it for an unscented pillar. Dev came in with two glasses of wine and handed her one without asking.

"The chicken's in," he said. "Forty minutes. Anything left?"

"The bathroom hand towel. The one with the stain."

"On it."

She stood alone a moment, listening to him rummage down the hall, and looked at the table: mismatched forks, cloth napkins she'd ironed badly, the candle throwing light across the wall. It was not a magazine dinner. It was theirs.

Headlights swung across the front window at ten till seven. Marisol set down her glass.

"They're early," she said.

Dev appeared in the hallway, tucking in his shirt with one hand. "They're always early."

He got the door. She got the wine. Voices filled the entryway, and the house, briefly, was loud.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marisol had already changed the tablecloth twice.

"The blue one looked fine," Dev said, coming in from the garage with a folding chair under each arm. He set them down and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"The blue one has a wine stain from Thanksgiving."

"Nobody's going to be looking at the tablecloth."

"Rachel looks at everything."

He didn't argue with that. Rachel had once told them, kindly, that their spice rack was organized in a way that suggested a lack of trust in the alphabet.

Dev went back to the kitchen and checked the chicken. It had another twenty minutes, maybe. He turned the oven light on and off, which he knew accomplished nothing, and then started on the salad because it was the one job he could do without being supervised. Marisol had learned years ago not to let him near anything that required timing.

"Did you text Paul about the parking?" she called.

"I told him to use the alley."

"He won't. He'll park in front of the Whitakers' and they'll leave a note."

"Then they'll leave a note."

She appeared in the doorway with a stack of cloth napkins, considered them, and set them on the counter. "You're wearing that?"

He looked down at his shirt. It was a decent shirt. "This is a good shirt."

"It's the shirt you wore when we picked up the mattress."

"That was two years ago."

"I remember it."

He went and changed. When he came back she had lit the candles too early and was already blowing two of them out, muttering that they'd burn down to nothing before dessert. He handed her a glass of wine and took one himself, and they stood for a second in the almost-quiet kitchen, the oven ticking.

Then the doorbell rang, eleven minutes early, and they both said "Paul" at the same time.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which meant Dana had gotten distracted again.

"It's fine," she said, scraping the pan into the sink. "It's supposed to be dark. That's the char."

Marcus didn't look up from the cutting board. "That's the smoke alarm's opinion, not mine."

They'd lived in the house on Fulton Street for six years, long enough to know the oven ran hot and the dining room chairs wobbled unless you set them just so. Dana wiped her hands on a dish towel and started on the salad while Marcus opened the wine to breathe, then went to find the good napkins, which were in the linen closet behind the beach towels, where they always were and where neither of them ever remembered to look first.

"Sam's bringing his sister," Dana called. "The one who doesn't eat dairy."

"You told me that Tuesday."

"I'm telling you again because you forgot the last time."

He conceded the point by not answering. He set the table—five plates, mismatched, because they'd never gotten around to replacing the two that broke during the move—and lit the squat candle Dana's mother had given them, which smelled faintly of nothing.

At six forty, Dana went upstairs to change out of the shirt she'd sweated through. Marcus vacuumed the rug in the front room, mostly for the lines it left. When she came down, she was wearing the green sweater and had put her hair up, and he said, "That's the one," and she said, "I know," and they stood there a second in the hallway, tired in the specific way of people who'd been busy for two hours doing things nobody would notice.

The doorbell rang at seven-oh-four. Dana glanced at the kitchen, at the rosemary pan still soaking, then at Marcus.

"Hide it," she said.

He put it in the oven. She opened the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and watched the wrinkles refuse to fall.

"It'll relax," Dev said from the kitchen. He was standing over a pot, tasting something off a wooden spoon. "Or nobody will look at it."

"Ellen will look at it."

"Ellen loves you. Ellen would look at a bedsheet and say it was charming."

Marisol pressed the fold flat with her palm and gave up. She counted out six plates, then remembered Priya was bringing her brother, and pulled down a seventh, which meant the mismatched one, the blue-rimmed plate from the set Dev's mother had sent when they got the apartment in Sacramento eleven years ago. She set it at her own place.

The kitchen smelled like cumin and onions going soft. Dev had made too much, the way he always did, and there were three separate cutting boards going, and a dish towel on the floor he hadn't noticed. Marisol picked it up.

"Ice," he said. "Did we—"

"Two bags. In the chest freezer."

"You're a genius."

"I'm a person who remembered ice." She opened the wine, both bottles, and left them on the counter to breathe, though she suspected that was a thing people said rather than a thing that mattered. Then she went to change her shirt, and while she was in the bedroom she heard Dev put on the Talking Heads record, low, the one he always started with.

She came back in a green blouse. He looked up.

"That one," he said.

"Yeah?"

Headlights swung across the front window. Marisol turned on the porch light, and Dev wiped his hands, and the doorbell rang before either of them got there.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the wrinkles with her palms, deciding they'd flatten on their own by seven.

In the kitchen, Danny had the oven fan roaring. He'd started the short ribs at two, and now the whole first floor of their rented duplex smelled like red wine and thyme. He lifted the lid, poked a piece with a fork, and made a face.

"Too tough?" Marisol called.

"Another forty minutes. Maybe an hour."

"They get here at seven."

"Then they'll drink first." He wiped his hands on the dish towel slung over his shoulder and went to find the corkscrew, which was, as always, in the junk drawer under a tangle of phone chargers.

Marisol swept the living room, then hid the pile of unopened mail in the bedroom because there was nowhere else for it to go. She lit the candle her sister had given her, the one that smelled vaguely of a hotel lobby, and set out the cheese Danny had picked up in Fairfield on his way home Thursday.

"Did you text Priya about the peanuts?" she asked.

"She's not allergic to peanuts. That's Rob."

"Rob's not coming."

Danny paused with the corkscrew halfway into the bottle. "Since when?"

"Since Tuesday. His mom's surgery."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I told you in the car."

He shrugged, because arguing about what got said in the car was a losing proposition for both of them. The cork came free with a soft pop.

Marisol changed out of her work clothes into jeans and the green sweater, and when she came back down Danny had put on a record and set six places instead of seven. She straightened a fork. He handed her a glass. Outside, a car door slammed, early.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The chicken's dry," he announced from the kitchen, prodding a thigh with a fork.

Dana came down the hall carrying a stack of cloth napkins, still barefoot, her hair pulled back with a clip she'd found in the junk drawer. "It's not dry. You said that about the pot roast in February and everyone asked for seconds."

"February was different. February I had gravy."

She set the napkins on the table and came to stand beside him, peering into the oven's amber light. "Ten more minutes and then let it rest. Rest is the whole thing. You never let anything rest."

"I let things rest."

"You reheated the lasagna forty seconds after it came out."

He laughed, which was what she'd been going for. Outside, the November dark had come down early, and the kitchen window held their reflections back at them — Marcus in the apron his sister had given him as a joke, Dana in a sweater with a small hole at the cuff she kept meaning to mend.

She went around the living room turning on lamps, kicking a pair of his running shoes under the console table, straightening the throw on the couch. The Hendersons were bringing wine. Priya was bringing her new boyfriend, whom neither of them had met. Tom was bringing, he'd said, "a surprise," which historically meant a tin of store-bought cookies.

"Should I change?" Marcus called.

"You should change."

"The apron stays on."

"The apron absolutely stays on."

He untied it anyway and went upstairs. Dana lit the candle on the table, blew out the match, and stood for a second in the quiet of the finished room — the smell of rosemary, the lamps, the faint sound of him opening a drawer overhead.

Then headlights swept the front window, early, and she called up the stairs, "They're here."


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which Dana insisted was the good kind of burnt.

"You said six-thirty," Marcus called from the bedroom, wrestling with a shirt that had seemed less wrinkled on the hanger. "Priya texted. She's bringing her sister."

"That's fine." Dana stood at the counter, scraping the charred bits off the focaccia with a butter knife. "That's four extra minutes of cooking, not a crisis."

"I didn't say crisis."

"Your voice said crisis."

He came out buttoning his cuffs, and she glanced up, then reached over and flattened his collar without comment. He caught her wrist and kissed her knuckles, which was their whole apology system, developed over eleven years and never once discussed.

The table needed setting. Marcus counted out plates — seven now — and discovered they only owned six matching ones, so the seventh became the good china plate from his grandmother, which he set at his own place. Dana moved it to Priya's sister's spot instead.

"She's a guest."

"She's a stranger. Strangers get the nice plate."

"That's a rule?"

"It's a rule now."

He put on music, something low and unobjectionable, and lit the two candles they'd been saving since Christmas. Dana pulled the chicken out, tented it in foil, and stood for a second with her hands on the counter, breathing.

"You okay?"

"Just tired. Long week." She straightened. "Did you get wine?"

He had. Two bottles of red and a white, plus a bottle of sparkling cider because Ben was six months sober and Marcus had remembered without being told, which Dana noticed and filed away, the way she filed away all the small evidence.

At 6:34 the buzzer rang. Dana untied her apron. Marcus wiped his palms on his jeans.

"Ready?"

"No," she said, smiling, and went to open the door.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The lamb needs another twenty," he called from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel that had seen better days. "Which means we eat at eight, not seven-thirty."

Diane came down the stairs still fastening an earring, her hair damp at the temples. "Nobody's going to riot. Jenna's always late anyway." She surveyed the dining room, then began redistributing the mismatched chairs they'd accumulated over eleven years — two from her grandmother, three from a curb in Somerville, one they'd genuinely purchased.

"Did you get wine?" Marcus asked.

"Two reds, one white, and that weird orange thing Pete keeps talking about." She set the bottles on the sideboard. "I also got flowers, which is why I was late, which is why I'm not apologizing for it."

He came out of the kitchen to look. Ranunculus, pale and slightly crushed on one side. "They're good."

"They were half off." She trimmed the stems over the sink while he crouched to find the good serving platter, the one buried behind the slow cooker they used twice a year.

The house smelled like garlic and rosemary now, the windows fogging slightly against the November dark. Diane put on a playlist, then changed it twice. Marcus found a wine stain on the tablecloth and turned it face-down.

"Napkins?" she asked.

"Paper."

"Marcus."

"They're the nice paper."

She laughed and let it go. At 7:12 he opened a beer and handed her one, and they stood in the kitchen together for a minute, not talking, listening to the oven tick. The lamb was resting. The table looked, if not elegant, then warm.

Headlights swung across the front window. Diane straightened the flowers one last time.

"Here we go," Marcus said, and went to get the door.


The Rivera-Chen house smelled like garlic and something faintly burnt.

"I told you the oven runs hot," Daniel said, waving a dish towel at the smoke detector, which chirped once and fell silent, unimpressed.

Marisol didn't look up from the cutting board. "You said that about the last oven too. And the one before it." She slid a mound of chopped cilantro into a bowl. "Maybe it's not the ovens."

"That's a bold accusation from a woman who once set a pot of water on fire."

"That was steam. It looked like fire."

He came up behind her and reached past her hip for the wine opener, and she leaned back into him for a second without either of them commenting on it. Outside, a car door slammed somewhere down the block. Not theirs yet. Twenty minutes, maybe.

Daniel started uncorking bottles. "Did you tell Priya about Kevin?"

"Told her he's bringing someone. I didn't editorialize."

"You editorialized."

"I said 'she seems nice, I guess,' which is a direct quote from you."

He laughed and set out glasses, counting them twice because he always lost track at six. Marisol went to change out of the shirt she'd worn to work, and when she came back down the stairs Daniel had lit the candles and turned the kitchen light down and put on the playlist she liked, the one with too much Al Green on it.

"Showoff," she said.

"You look good."

"I know." She straightened his collar anyway, tugged it flat. "Chairs. We need the two from the office."

He went to get them. She checked the roast, decided it would survive, and stood for one quiet moment in the warm kitchen with everything nearly ready.

The doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

"Showtime," Daniel said.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, back in March. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the folds flat with her palms while David chopped shallots at the counter, the knife tapping fast against the board.

"They're coming at seven?" he asked.

"Six-thirty. Which means Kaitlyn shows at six-fifteen and stands in the kitchen asking if she can help."

"She can chop."

"She cannot chop. Remember Thanksgiving."

David laughed and scraped the shallots into the pan, where they hissed and immediately smelled like something worth waiting for. He'd been planning this braise for two weeks, ever since Marisol mentioned that Pete and Rina had never really seen the house — not since the kitchen was finished, anyway. There was a certain pride in it, the kind neither of them would admit out loud.

Marisol went around the living room collecting evidence: a stack of unopened mail, David's reading glasses, the throw blanket that had migrated to the floor sometime Tuesday. She stuffed the mail in a drawer and made a mental note to actually deal with it. Then she lit the candle on the bookshelf, the fig one, and stood back to look at the room the way a stranger might.

"Wine's in the fridge," David called. "Can you pull the reds out to breathe?"

"On it."

She uncorked two bottles and set them on the sideboard. Behind her, David swore mildly — the lid of the Dutch oven had slipped, splashing a little onto the burner. He wiped it with a dish towel, unbothered.

At 6:12, headlights swept across the front window. Marisol looked at David. He wiped his hands on his jeans, tugged his shirt straight, and grinned.

"Kaitlyn," they said together.


The Reyes-Coleman house smelled like garlic by four o'clock.

Marisol had started the braise early, mostly because she knew she'd lose the thread of the afternoon otherwise. She stood at the stove in a flour-dusted apron, tasting from a wooden spoon, adding a pinch more salt, tasting again. On the counter beside her, her phone buzzed with a text from Priya: *Running ten minutes late, is that okay?* It was always okay. Priya had been ten minutes late to everything since college.

"Ten minutes late," she called toward the living room.

"Which means twenty," Devon answered. He was on his knees behind the couch, wrestling the vacuum cord out of a tangle. He'd spent the last hour on things nobody would notice — the smudge on the sliding door, the pile of unopened mail he'd finally sorted into keep and recycle, the burnt-out bulb over the dining table that had been out since February. He noticed those things. Marisol noticed the food.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she asked.

"Five, plus the piano bench."

"The piano bench for Tom? He's six-four."

Devon considered this. "Tom gets a real chair. I'll take the bench."

By five-thirty the table was set with the good plates, the ones from his grandmother, mismatched and heavy. Marisol pulled the bread out and burned two fingers doing it, swearing in Spanish, and Devon handed her a dish towel full of ice without saying anything, then went back to opening the wine.

They stood together for a minute in the kitchen, the oven ticking as it cooled. She leaned into his shoulder. He smelled like lemon cleaner.

"Did we forget anything?" she said.

"Probably. We always do."

The doorbell rang. It was Priya, right on time for once, holding a pie.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels she'd meant to donate. She shook it out over the dining table while Danny, in the kitchen, argued with the oven.

"It's preheating," he called. "It says it's preheating. It's been saying that for eleven minutes."

"Did you press start?"

A pause. "I pressed start."

She smoothed a wrinkle with her palm. Six o'clock. The Ortegas were always ten minutes early, and Priya and Jess were always twenty minutes late, which meant the doorbell would start at ten till and continue intermittently for an hour. She counted out plates. One had a chip on the rim, so she put it at her own seat.

Danny came out carrying a bowl of olives, then set it down and went back for napkins. He'd worn the blue shirt without being asked, which she noted and decided not to comment on, because commenting made him self-conscious.

"I forgot bread," he said.

"There's a baguette in the freezer."

"That's not the same."

"It's dinner with people who've seen our bathroom. It's fine."

He put the baguette in the oven anyway, which by then had grudgingly reached temperature. Marisol lit two candles, considered a third, decided against it. The house smelled like garlic and the faint chemical ghost of the bathroom cleaner Danny had used at four o'clock in a burst of panic.

"Did you move my keys?" he asked.

"They're in the bowl."

"They're not."

"Danny, they're in the bowl."

He checked the bowl. They were in the bowl.

At 5:52 the doorbell rang. Marisol looked at him; he looked at her. Some agreement passed between them about who was closer, and he wiped his hands on a dish towel and went, and she heard Ray Ortega's laugh come into the house before he did.


The doorbell would ring at seven, which gave them forty minutes.

Miguel stood at the stove with a wooden spoon, tasting the pozole and adding another pinch of oregano. He'd started the pork at noon, before his shift ended, and the kitchen still smelled like the whole afternoon had happened in it. Behind him, David was hunting through the linen closet.

"Do we own napkins?" David called. "Cloth ones. The blue ones your mother sent."

"Third shelf, under the beach towels."

"There are no beach towels on the third shelf."

Miguel set down the spoon and went to look. The napkins were on the second shelf, exactly where he'd said, and he pulled them out without comment, which was its own kind of comment.

"Don't," David said.

"I didn't say anything."

They moved around each other in the small apartment with the choreography of eleven years. David wiped down the table, then went back over the same spot twice because Priya was coming and Priya noticed things. Miguel found the good bowls, the ones they used maybe four times a year, and rinsed the dust off them.

"Ana's bringing her new boyfriend," David said.

"The one with the podcast?"

"That one."

"Then we should have more wine."

There was a moment near six-fifty when they both stopped — David holding a stack of bowls, Miguel with a lighter in his hand for the candles — and the apartment was clean and warm and smelled like garlic and lime, and nothing else needed doing yet.

"It looks good," David said.

"It does."

David kissed the side of his head on the way past, and then the buzzer went off eight minutes early, which was Priya, who was always early, and Miguel went to let her in while David lit the candles himself.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The chicken's dry," he announced from the kitchen, poking at the thighs with a fork.

Renata came in carrying a stack of mismatched plates, her hair still damp from the shower. "It's not dry. You said that last time and Diane asked for the recipe."

"Diane asks everyone for recipes. It's her love language." He pulled the pan out anyway and tented it with foil, then wiped his hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle. "Did you get wine?"

"Two bottles of the Malbec. And that sparkling thing for Priya, since she's not drinking."

Marcus paused. "Right. The pregnancy."

"She hasn't announced it. Don't say anything."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

Renata gave him a look over the top of the plates. Fourteen years of marriage had made the look sufficient.

She set the table while he made the salad, the two of them moving around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the unconscious choreography of people who had negotiated this exact space thousands of times. He reached for the tongs; she leaned back without looking. She opened the drawer; he stepped left.

"Should we light candles?" she asked. "Or is that too much for a Tuesday?"

"It's Wednesday."

"Is it Wednesday?"

They lit the candles.

At 6:52, Marcus changed his shirt because the first one had olive oil on the cuff. Renata found the good napkins in the linen closet behind the beach towels, where they'd been since the last time anyone came over, which had been longer ago than either of them wanted to calculate.

"It looks nice," she said, standing in the doorway.

Marcus surveyed the room — the crooked candles, the chicken resting, the dog banished to the bedroom. "It looks fine."

The doorbell rang. They looked at each other, and Renata went to answer it.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The lamb needs to rest," he said, mostly to himself, sliding the roasting pan onto the stovetop. Steam fogged the kitchen window, blurring the maple tree in their Cleveland backyard into a smear of October orange.

Dana came down the stairs with her hair still damp, holding two shirts on hangers. "Blue or the gray one?"

"Blue. The gray makes you look like you're going to a funeral."

"It's charcoal."

"It's a funeral."

She disappeared back upstairs. He heard the closet door, then the particular creak of the floorboard by their bed that they'd been meaning to fix for six years.

The table wasn't set. He'd forgotten the table entirely. He was pulling the good plates down when Dana reappeared in the blue shirt, sleeves rolled, and took them from him without a word. She counted out six settings, then paused.

"Is Reza bringing his sister?"

"He said maybe."

She added a seventh, then a napkin folded the fussy way her mother had taught her. Marcus watched for a second longer than he meant to.

"What?"

"Nothing. You missed a spot." He tapped his own jaw.

She swiped at her chin, found nothing, and threw a napkin at him.

By seven-fifteen the potatoes were done, the wine was open, and Dana had lit the candles twice because the first match went out. Marcus stood in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, surveying it: the mismatched chairs, the good plates, the lamb resting under foil.

"It looks nice," she said.

"It looks like we tried."

"We did try."

Headlights swung across the front window. Dana straightened a fork that was already straight. Marcus wiped his hands on the dish towel, hung it on the oven handle, and went to answer the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet, still smelling faintly of the cedar block she'd tossed in there last spring. She shook it out over the dining table while the oven ticked and warmed behind her.

"Did you get the wine?" she called.

Dev came in from the garage with two bottles under one arm and a paper bag of ice under the other. "Red and white. And I got the fancy crackers because you said the last ones tasted like drywall."

"They did taste like drywall."

He set everything on the counter and started emptying the dishwasher, stacking plates with the particular clatter that meant he was moving fast. Marisol counted chairs — six, and they needed seven. She went upstairs and dragged the desk chair down, wheels bumping on each step.

"That thing's going to squeak all night," Dev said.

"Whoever gets it can rock back and forth and be entertained."

The chicken came out at six-fifteen, skin crackling, and Dev tented it with foil while Marisol tossed the salad with her hands, the way her mother did. She wiped them on a dish towel and looked around: the water rings on the coffee table, the pile of mail she'd shoved into a drawer, the hall light with the burnt-out bulb.

"Should I run and get a bulb?"

"Nobody's inspecting the hallway," Dev said. He handed her a glass of the white, poured early on purpose. They stood there a second, drinking, listening to the house be quiet.

Then the doorbell — Amara and Josh, always ten minutes early, holding a pie.

"We brought dessert," Amara announced.

"We brought a chair from the office," Marisol said, and pushed it forward with her foot.

Josh sat in it immediately. It squeaked. Everyone laughed, and Dev went to open the red.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Priya was already convinced they were behind.

"The chicken needs to rest," she said, sliding the pan onto the stove. "Which means we have exactly as long as it takes the chicken to rest."

Daniel came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs, one under each arm. "We're fine. Marcus is always twenty minutes late, and he's driving Tess, so that's two people accounted for."

"Sofia's never late."

"Sofia's never late," he agreed, and set the chairs against the wall. He looked at the dining table, which currently held a stack of unopened mail, a phone charger, and a plastic bin of Halloween decorations neither of them had put away in November, let alone now, in February. He picked up the bin and carried it to the hall closet, where he wedged it in front of the vacuum and shut the door quickly, holding it a second to make sure it stayed.

"I saw that," Priya said, without turning around.

"You did not."

"I heard it. That's the sound of a door that doesn't want to close."

He laughed and started setting out plates. They had six matching ones and two that didn't match, which meant a quiet negotiation every time about who got stuck with the blue ones. He gave the mismatched pair to their own seats, the way they always did.

Priya tasted the sauce, made a face, added salt, tasted again, and handed him the spoon. "Honest opinion."

"Better than last time."

"That's not an opinion, that's a comparison."

"It's good, Pri. It's really good."

She wiped her hands on a towel and looked around the kitchen — flour on the counter, a sink full of bowls, the good candles finally lit. Outside, headlights swung across the front window.

"That's Sofia," she said.

Daniel was already walking to the door.


David heard the front door before he heard the car, which meant Renee had let it slam again, arms full of grocery bags.

"They're out of the good sourdough," she called from the entryway. "I got the ciabatta."

"Ciabatta's fine." He was at the sink, scrubbing potatoes, sleeves pushed to his elbows. Twelve years of marriage had taught him that Renee announced problems mostly to be told they weren't problems.

She came into the kitchen and set the bags down, then stood behind him a moment, looking at the counter. "You started the potatoes without the rosemary."

"There's rosemary."

"There's dried rosemary. Marta brought us that plant."

"Then use the plant."

She went out to the deck in her coat and came back with a fistful of it, smelling like a hardware store, and started stripping the leaves off the stems while he quartered the potatoes. Neither of them said anything for a while. The oven ticked as it heated.

"Did you text Paul about the wine?" she asked.

"He's bringing red. Jenna's bringing a pie, apparently, which is going to be weird with the flourless thing you made."

"It's not weird. People can have two desserts." Renee wiped her hands on a dish towel and looked at the table, which had four chairs and needed six. "Can you get the folding ones from the basement?"

He went. When he came back up she had changed her shirt and put on earrings, and had moved the mail off the table and into a drawer, the way she did before company. He set up the chairs, which didn't match anything.

"They're fine," she said, before he asked.

At six-forty the potatoes came out, over-rosemaried and good. At six-fifty they heard a car door. Renee turned on the porch light; David turned down the music, then turned it back up two notches, and went to open the door.


The Last Twenty Minutes

Rosa found the good tablecloth wadded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels, still creased from the last time they'd used it, Thanksgiving maybe, or Danny's birthday.

"It's wrinkled," she called toward the kitchen.

"They're not coming to inspect the tablecloth," Amelia said. She was standing over a pot of white beans, tasting from a wooden spoon, adding salt with the confidence of someone who had made this dish forty times. Outside, a car door slammed—not theirs, the neighbors'—and Rosa flinched anyway.

"I'll iron it."

"There's no time to iron it."

"There's eighteen minutes."

Amelia turned around, spoon still in hand. "Rosa."

But Rosa was already dragging the ironing board out of the hall closet, and Amelia knew from eleven years of this that arguing would cost more time than the ironing would. So she went back to the beans, then to the bread, sawing it into thick uneven slices while the iron hissed in the other room.

She could hear Rosa muttering at a stubborn fold. She could hear the radiator knocking. February in Providence, the windows fogged at the corners.

"Did you light the candles?" Rosa called.

"Not yet."

"Light them now so the smell burns off."

Amelia lit them. She wiped down the counter, set out the good glasses, the mismatched ones they'd collected from estate sales, and stepped back to look at the table—bare wood, waiting.

Rosa came in holding the cloth like something rescued. Together they shook it out over the table, the fabric ballooning between them, settling.

"See," Rosa said.

"It looks nice," Amelia admitted.

Rosa kissed the side of her head, tasted salt from the steam. "You have flour on your sleeve."

"I know."

The doorbell rang. Neither of them moved for a second—that small held breath before the house filled up with other people's voices—and then Amelia went to answer it, and Rosa stayed a moment longer, straightening a corner that was already straight.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, buried under a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. He carried it to the kitchen table where Priya was scrolling through her phone, comparing motel prices in Asheville.

"Ninety-four a night at the place off the highway," she said. "But the reviews mention a smell."

"What kind of smell?"

"They don't specify. Which worries me more."

He opened the atlas to North Carolina, running his thumb along the blue vein of I-40. "There's that place we drove past in April. The one with the wooden bear out front."

"That was Boone."

"Was it?"

She turned the phone toward him. A photo of a bear carved from a stump, wearing a scarf. He conceded.

They booked two nights, checking out Sunday morning. Priya wrote it on the calendar magnet on the fridge, in the small squares between her mother's cardiology appointment and the recycling pickup.

Friday afternoon Marcus loaded the car while Priya emptied the crisper drawer of things that would rot. He put her bag behind the driver's seat, his in the trunk, the cooler in the footwell where she'd complain about it later.

"Did you unplug the toaster?"

"The toaster doesn't need unplugging."

"You always say that. And then you go back in and unplug it."

He went back in and unplugged it.

They got on the road at four-fifteen, later than planned, into the slow congealing of Friday traffic. Priya read the exit signs aloud without meaning to. Marcus put on the radio, then turned it off when the ads started, then forgot to turn it back on.

Near Statesville she said she was hungry. They pulled into a Wendy's, ate in the parking lot with the windows down, and discussed whether to push through or stop somewhere for the night. They pushed through. The mountains were still blue when they arrived.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage behind a bag of birdseed, and she carried it into the kitchen holding it away from her body, the way she'd hold a diaper.

"Something died in here," she said.

Dev looked up from his laptop, where he'd been comparing two motels in Sandusky for the better part of forty minutes. "That's from the Fourth. There were shrimp."

"There were shrimp in July."

"I said I'd wash it."

She set it in the sink and ran hot water while he read her the amenities of the second motel, which had a continental breakfast but no pool. The first had a pool but reviews that mentioned a smell. They went back and forth. Dev said the pool didn't matter because they'd be at the lake anyway; Marisol said if it didn't matter, book the cheaper one and stop reading to her.

He booked the cheaper one.

They left Saturday at seven-forty, which was later than the seven he'd wanted and earlier than the eight she'd argued for. Marisol drove first because she liked the highway before the traffic thickened. Dev put his feet on the dash until she gave him a look, and then he didn't.

Somewhere past Toledo they stopped for gas and he came out of the station with two coffees and a bag of those little powdered donuts, which she said she didn't want and then ate four of.

"You're going to get sugar on the seat," he said.

"It's my car."

"It's our car."

"It's my car that we share."

He laughed. She pulled back onto the on-ramp, merged, settled into the right lane. The sun was coming up hard through the windshield and he found her sunglasses in the glove box and handed them over without her asking, and she put them on and said thanks, and neither of them said anything for a while after that.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they hadn't unpacked in three years.

"We could just use the phone," Dana said from the kitchen table, where she was making a list on the back of a grocery receipt.

"I know. I like the paper." He spread it across the counter and traced the highway north with his finger. "Two and a half hours if we leave by nine."

"Nine is optimistic."

"Nine-thirty, then."

She wrote *toothbrushes* on the receipt, then *the good coffee*, then crossed out *the good coffee* because the cabin listing said there was a machine and she didn't want to be the kind of people who brought their own beans. Marcus came over and read the list upside down.

"You forgot the phone charger."

"You always forget the phone charger. I'm not the one who forgets it."

"Fair."

They packed Friday night, badly. Dana laid out clothes on the bed and then put half of them back. Marcus threw two flannel shirts and a pair of jeans into a duffel bag in under four minutes and then sat on the edge of the bed watching her deliberate over a sweater.

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

"I know what forty degrees feels like."

"Just saying."

She brought the sweater.

In the morning they left at 9:52. Marcus drove the first leg; Dana held the coffee cups until they cleared the exit ramp. They argued mildly about whether to stop at the diner they liked in Millersburg or push through, and settled it by stopping.

The waitress called them both *hon*. Marcus ordered eggs over medium and got them over hard and ate them anyway without saying anything, which Dana noticed and found, for no reason she could name, unbearably endearing.

They were back on the road by eleven.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a question neither of them wanted to answer first.

"Two nights," Marisol said. "So two shirts, or three?"

Dev looked up from his phone, where he'd been comparing gas prices along I-81. "Three. You always spill something on the first one."

"That was one time. At your cousin's wedding."

"It was memorable."

She threw a rolled pair of socks at him and he caught it without looking, which annoyed her slightly, the way small competencies sometimes did after eleven years.

They'd chosen Asheville because it was four hours away and because Marisol's coworker wouldn't stop talking about a bookstore there with a cat. The hotel was mid-range, chosen after forty minutes of scrolling on a Tuesday night, rejected options including one that was cheaper but had a review mentioning "a smell."

"Did you cancel the dog walker or should I?" Dev asked.

"Nadia's taking Biscuit. I told you Thursday."

"You told me while I was on the phone with my mother."

"I told you before that." She zipped the suitcase halfway, then unzipped it to add a book she knew she wouldn't read.

They left at seven-fifteen Saturday morning, twenty minutes later than planned because Dev couldn't find the phone charger, which was in the car, where he had left it. Marisol drove first. The sky over the interstate was the flat white of early October.

At the second gas station, they argued mildly about whether to eat the sandwiches she'd packed or stop somewhere. They ate the sandwiches in the parking lot, sitting on the tailgate, and Dev got mustard on his sleeve.

"First shirt," Marisol said.

"Shut up."

She laughed. He handed her a napkin, and they got back on the road with the radio low, not talking much, which was fine.


The Rasmussens had been talking about Door County since March, and now it was almost October, which meant Diane had finally booked something.

"Two nights," she said, holding her laptop toward Paul across the kitchen island. "The place with the porch. It's not on the water but it's four blocks."

Paul squinted at the screen. He was still in his work clothes, tie loosened, a beer sweating on the counter beside a pile of unopened mail. "Four blocks is fine. Is that a hide-a-bed in the living room?"

"Why would we need a hide-a-bed?"

"I'm just saying it looks like a hide-a-bed."

She booked it. Friday afternoon they left later than planned because Paul couldn't find the good cooler, the one with the wheels, and eventually located it in the garage rafters holding a tangle of Christmas lights. Diane emptied the lights onto the workbench and said she'd deal with them in December, which they both knew meant February.

They stopped at the Kwik Trip in Manitowoc for gas and Paul came back with two coffees and a bag of those glazed donut holes he liked. Diane took one and said nothing about the sugar. She drove the second leg while Paul dozed against the window with his mouth slightly open, waking once near Algoma to ask if she wanted him to take over.

"You just fell asleep."

"I'm resting my eyes at a red light."

"There aren't any red lights."

The rental had a lockbox that stuck. Paul worked at it with his thumbnail for four minutes while Diane stood on the porch with a grocery bag on each arm, watching a neighbor rake leaves in the dark. When the box finally opened, Paul held up the key like a trophy.

Inside, it smelled faintly of cedar and someone else's laundry soap. There was, in fact, a hide-a-bed.

"Told you," Paul said.

Diane put the milk in the refrigerator and started opening windows.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage behind a stack of paint cans, still faintly smelling of last summer's lake trip. She hauled it inside and set it on the kitchen counter, where Dev was scrolling through hotel listings on his laptop.

"There's one in Galena for eighty-nine a night," he said. "Free breakfast. But the reviews mention thin walls."

"How thin?"

"One person says they could hear the ice machine."

Marisol wiped out the cooler with a paper towel. "We've slept through worse. Book it."

He hesitated, hovering over the button. "Or there's a place ten minutes outside town. Nicer. One-forty."

"Eighty-nine," she said. "We're barely going to be in the room."

Dev booked it and read the confirmation number aloud while Marisol wrote it on the back of a grocery receipt, which she then lost immediately in the pile of mail on the counter.

They packed Friday after work. Dev wanted to leave by five to beat traffic on I-90; Marisol pointed out that leaving at five *was* the traffic. They compromised on six-fifteen, which turned into six-forty because Dev couldn't find his sunglasses and Marisol insisted on watering the plants, even the sad basil that had been dying since March.

In the car, she took the aux cord first, which was the rule for whoever wasn't driving. Dev merged onto the highway and complained about a pickup truck. Marisol read him a list of things to do in Galena, most of which involved fudge.

"We could do the trolley tour," she said.

"That's for old people."

"We're thirty-eight."

They stopped in Rockford for gas and gas station coffee. Marisol got a bag of pretzels and ate half before they hit the on-ramp. The sun was going down over the flat fields, orange and unhurried, and Dev turned the music down without saying why.


The suitcase sat open on the bed for three days before either of them put anything in it.

"Are we doing the coast or the mountains?" Dana asked Thursday night, scrolling through her phone at the kitchen table while the dishwasher rumbled.

Marcus was wiping down the counter. "You said the coast last week."

"I said the coast if the weather held. It's supposed to rain Saturday."

"It's Oregon. It rains."

She looked up. "We live in Sacramento."

"Fine. Mountains, then. There's that place in Nevada City with the porch." He hung the dishcloth over the faucet, then rehung it when it slid off. "Two nights or one?"

"One. I have to be back for my mom's thing Sunday afternoon."

They booked it on the laptop while sitting on opposite ends of the couch, Dana reading reviews aloud and Marcus entering the credit card number he'd memorized years ago. Ninety-four dollars a night, continental breakfast, a cancellation policy neither of them read closely.

Friday morning she packed both bags because he packed badly. He took the trash out and checked the oil, which didn't need checking, and put the good sunglasses in the glove compartment. They left at ten forty, twenty minutes later than planned, because Marcus wanted to water the tomatoes first and Dana couldn't find her charger.

On Highway 49 they argued mildly about whether to stop in Auburn for lunch or push through. They pushed through, then stopped at a gas station outside Grass Valley for beef jerky and a Diet Coke, which Dana said proved nothing.

"It proves I was right about Auburn," Marcus said.

"It proves you were hungry."

The pines came up on both sides of the road. She put her feet on the dashboard, which he hated, and he didn't say anything about it. The heater made a ticking sound. Neither of them turned on the radio for a while.


The Thursday before, Marisol spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, though she'd already looked up the route on her phone twice.

"Three hours if we leave by seven," she said. "Four if you insist on the coffee place in Bloomington."

Dev looked up from the dishwasher, where he was rearranging the bottom rack the way he did every night, as though she'd loaded it wrong on purpose. "I insist on the coffee place in Bloomington."

They were going to a cabin near Brown County that Dev's coworker had rented out for cheap because a pipe had burst in the guest bathroom and never been fully fixed. Two nights. Marisol had wanted to go somewhere with an ocean, but the flights were four hundred dollars apiece and October was already thin.

Friday morning she packed while Dev checked the tire pressure in the driveway, crouched by the rear passenger side in his work fleece, breath visible. She put in two sweaters, then took one out, then put it back. She packed the good pillow. She packed the cribbage board without asking, because she knew.

"Did you get the dog food?" he called through the screen door.

"Rosalie's got dog food. She's had dogs for thirty years."

"She has a small dog. Wally is not a small dog."

She put a bag of kibble by the door.

They loaded the car at 7:20, which Dev noted and Marisol ignored. He drove first. Somewhere past Lafayette she fell asleep against the window and woke to find he'd turned the radio down instead of off, the way he did.

At the coffee place he got out and stretched, both hands on his lower back, an old man's gesture at thirty-eight.

"Large dark roast?" he said.

"And whatever pastry looks least sad."

He came back with two croissants. They ate them in the parking lot before going on.


Marisol had the map open on the kitchen table, the paper kind, because she liked the way it forced you to see everything between here and there.

"Two hours forty," Dev said, looking at his phone. "Says two-fifteen if we leave before seven."

"We're not leaving before seven."

"I'm just reporting the news."

They were driving to Galena for two nights, a decision made three weeks earlier during a stretch of February when the apartment had started to feel like a waiting room. Marisol had found an inn with a porch. Dev had found a brewery within walking distance of the inn. These felt like complementary contributions.

Friday morning she packed while he made coffee, and they negotiated the cooler.

"Do we need the cooler," he said.

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

"Are we buying cheese?"

"Dev."

He put the cooler in the trunk. She came out with a canvas bag of things he suspected they wouldn't use — a deck of cards, a paperback she'd been not-reading since November, a small candle. He didn't say anything about the candle. He had once said something about a candle and had learned.

They got on I-90 at 7:40. Marisol drove first because she preferred the leaving part and he preferred the arriving part. Somewhere past Rockford they stopped at a gas station and split a bag of pretzels and she used the bathroom while he cleaned the windshield with the squeegee, which was mostly water, which did almost nothing.

"There's a diner in Freeport," she said, back in the car. "Or we push through and eat there."

"Push through."

"Okay."

She merged, checked her mirror, and settled into the left lane. He put his hand on her knee. The fields went by, brown and flat and unremarkable, and neither of them said anything for eleven miles, and it was fine.


On Thursday night, Dana spread the road atlas across the kitchen table, which made Peter laugh, because they both had phones.

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

They were going to Galena, three hours west, because Peter's coworker had mentioned an inn with a wraparound porch and Dana had been saying for a month that she wanted to sleep somewhere that wasn't their apartment. The inn was booked, so they took a motel on the edge of town for ninety-four dollars a night and agreed that was fine, they'd barely be in the room.

Friday after work they argued mildly about departure time. Peter wanted to leave at five and hit the road before dark. Dana pointed out that five o'clock Friday on the interstate was a punishment, not a plan, and they should eat first and go at six thirty. She won by making chicken and rice, which was hard to argue against.

Peter packed the car while she cleaned up. He put the small suitcase in the trunk, then his boots, then the umbrella, because the forecast said forty percent Saturday. He texted their neighbor Renata about the cat. Renata wrote back a thumbs up and a picture of her own cat, unrelated.

They left at six fifty. Dana drove the first leg with her seat too far forward, as always. Peter fiddled with the radio until he found a station playing something from 1997, then gave up on it twenty minutes later when it dissolved into static.

Outside Rockford they stopped for gas and Peter bought two coffees and a bag of pretzels. Dana ate the pretzels while he drove the rest.

They got in at ten. The motel smelled like carpet shampoo. Dana lay down on top of the bedspread with her shoes on, and Peter said, "Don't," and she said, "Five minutes."


The Beckstroms had decided on Tuesday, over reheated lasagna, that they would drive to Galena.

"Two nights," Priya said. "Not three. I want a full Sunday to do laundry."

Daniel agreed, though he privately thought two nights was hardly worth the four-hour drive. He booked a room at an inn with a wraparound porch, then spent twenty minutes reading reviews that complained about thin walls, and booked it anyway.

Friday morning they packed. Priya was efficient, rolling her clothes into tight cylinders, adding a cardigan because northern Illinois in October could turn on you. Daniel threw things into a duffel and then unpacked half of it when she asked whether he really needed three pairs of shoes.

"One of them is for hiking."

"We're not hiking. We're walking on a brick street looking at fudge shops."

He kept the boots anyway, but he moved them to the trunk so they wouldn't take up room in the back seat.

They left at ten-fifteen, which was later than Daniel wanted and earlier than Priya expected. She drove first. At a gas station outside Rockford they argued mildly about whether to buy sandwiches there or wait, and settled on coffee plus a bag of pretzels that neither of them really wanted but that they finished before Freeport.

The highway thinned into two lanes. Corn fields, already cut, went by in rows that seemed to pivot as they passed. Priya put on a podcast, then turned it off when Daniel started talking about his sister's kitchen renovation.

"She's going to regret the open shelving," Priya said.

"That's what I said."

They got in around two-thirty. The room smelled faintly of cedar and old radiator dust. Priya tested the mattress with the flat of her hand, then sat down on it.

"Okay," she said. "Not bad."

Daniel was already at the window, working out how much daylight they had left.


The suitcase lay open on the bed, and Marcus stood over it holding two nearly identical flannel shirts.

"Blue or gray?" he asked.

Priya didn't look up from her phone. "It's going to be sixty-five and raining. Bring both, they weigh nothing."

"You always say that, and then you complain the car's full."

"That's because you also bring three pairs of shoes."

He put both shirts in. Outside, the Saturday morning was already brighter than either of them had planned for; they'd meant to leave by seven and it was pushing nine. The coffee maker had beeped twenty minutes ago and neither had poured a cup.

"Did you cancel the grocery delivery?" Priya asked.

"You said you'd do it."

"I said I'd do it if you reminded me."

She rescheduled it for Monday while Marcus carried the bag downstairs and wedged it behind the driver's seat, where it wouldn't slide. The cooler went in the trunk with four seltzers, the leftover pasta salad, and a bag of pretzels he'd bought specifically because Priya liked the sourdough ones and the store had finally restocked them.

They argued briefly about the thermostat—she wanted it at fifty-eight, he thought that was cruel to the houseplants—and settled on sixty-two. Priya watered the pothos anyway.

By nine-forty they were on the highway heading north toward the cabin her cousin rented out at a discount. Marcus drove. Priya held the aux cord hostage for the first hour, playing an album he'd heard four hundred times and had come to like against his will.

"We forgot the good pillow," she said around exit 34.

"We did not forget it. I put it in the back seat."

She turned and looked. It was there, in its blue case, sitting upright like a passenger.

"Okay," she said. "Good."

He reached over; she took his hand without comment, and they drove.


The Weekend Plan

The idea started at the kitchen table on a Tuesday, when Dana looked up from her laptop and said, "What if we just went somewhere Friday?"

Marcus was rinsing a pan. "Somewhere where?"

"Anywhere within four hours. Not the airport."

They settled on a small town in the mountains, two and a half hours northwest, because Dana's coworker had mentioned a bakery there and Marcus liked the idea of a drive with actual scenery. He found a motel with decent reviews and a coffee maker in the room. Ninety-four dollars a night. He booked two nights before Dana could second-guess it.

Thursday evening they argued mildly about departure time. Marcus wanted to leave right after work, beat the traffic. Dana wanted to sleep in and leave Saturday morning, rested. They compromised on Friday at six, which meant packing Thursday night.

Dana pulled out the duffel bag from under the bed and found a sock in it from a trip two summers ago. Marcus stood in front of the closet holding two flannels, unable to decide, until Dana said, "Take both, it's one bag."

They forgot the phone chargers, remembered them, forgot the ibuprofen, remembered that too. Marcus put a bag of pretzels and two bananas in the front seat because he said gas station food made him feel unwell. Dana filled a water bottle and left it on the counter, where it stayed.

Friday, they left at 6:20. Marcus drove the first hour. Dana handled the music and read aloud the names of towns they passed, most of which sounded made up. Around Exit 41 they stopped for gas, and Dana bought a coffee and a bag of gummy worms, which she opened before she was back in the car.

"You said gas station food," she said.

"I said food," Marcus said. "Candy's different."

She fed him a worm and they merged back onto the highway.


Marguerite found the road atlas in the hall closet, behind the vacuum, its cover soft as cloth from years of handling. She brought it to the kitchen table and spread it open to Pennsylvania.

"We could do the covered bridges," she said. "There's a cluster of them near Washington County."

Desmond looked up from the sink, where he was rinsing coffee grounds out of the carafe. "How far is that?"

"Four hours, maybe. Four and a half if we stop."

"We'll stop." He set the carafe upside down on a dish towel. "You want to leave Friday after work or Saturday morning?"

She considered. Friday meant driving in the dark, arriving at some motel near midnight, but it also meant a full Saturday. Saturday morning meant sleeping in their own bed and losing half a day.

"Friday," she said. "But I'm not cooking Thursday. We'll eat whatever's left."

He agreed to that easily. He always did; he was the one who ate leftovers standing at the counter anyway.

They booked two nights at a place called the Ridgeview, which had eleven reviews and a photograph of a parking lot. Desmond read the reviews aloud while Marguerite made a list on the back of an envelope: chargers, allergy pills, the good camera, sneakers.

"Someone says the walls are thin," he reported.

"Someone always says that."

Thursday they ate a strange dinner of rice, half a rotisserie chicken, and a can of green beans. Friday at five-fifteen Desmond backed the car out while Marguerite locked the door twice, the way she did, testing the knob.

Twenty minutes onto the highway she reached over and turned the radio down.

"Did you unplug the iron?"

"You didn't use the iron."

"I used it Tuesday."

He merged into the left lane. "It's unplugged," he said, and she decided to believe him, and watched the exits go by.


The Loading of the Car

Marisol found the cooler in the garage rafters, still smelling faintly of last summer's lake trip. She wiped it out with a paper towel while Dev stood in the kitchen doorway, phone in hand, reading aloud from a website.

"There's a place in Bardstown that does distillery tours, but you have to book ahead. Or there's a state park with a covered bridge."

"How far is the covered bridge?"

"Twenty minutes past the hotel."

"Then the covered bridge," she said. "I don't want to do a tour where someone talks at us for ninety minutes."

He didn't argue, which surprised her a little. He'd been the one to suggest the trip on Tuesday, standing at the sink, saying he couldn't remember the last time they'd left the county. She'd said yes before she thought about the dog, the mail, her mother's Sunday phone call.

They packed Saturday morning. Dev put the suitcase in the trunk, then took it out again to fit the cooler underneath, then put it back on top anyway. Marisol brought the dog's bag next door to Karen's and stayed longer than she meant to, listening to a story about Karen's son's transmission.

"We're losing daylight," Dev said when she came back, though it was nine-fifteen.

"We're losing your patience."

He laughed and handed her the coffee he'd made in the travel mug, the good one with the lid that didn't leak. She got in and adjusted the seat, which he always pushed back too far.

Somewhere past the county line he asked if she'd remembered the phone charger. She hadn't. He said there was one in the glove box, probably. There was. She plugged it in, and neither of them said anything for a few miles, the highway unspooling ahead, the radio low, the whole thin bright weekend still in front of them.


The Thermos Question

The suitcase lay open on the bed like an argument neither of them had started yet.

"Two nights," Dana said. "You don't need four shirts."

Marcus held one up, a flannel he'd owned since graduate school. "What if it rains and I get soaked?"

"Then you wear the other three in succession, like a very slow burlesque."

He put two shirts back. She noticed and said nothing, which was its own kind of thank you.

They were driving to Asheville because Dana's cousin had a cabin she never used and had offered it in a text message with too many exclamation points. Marcus had wanted to fly somewhere. Dana had pointed out that flying somewhere cost money they'd agreed to save for the water heater, which had begun making a noise like a man clearing his throat.

At 6:40 a.m. Saturday they loaded the car. Marcus insisted on the thermos, the big steel one, filling it with coffee while Dana idled in the driveway.

"We're going to stop at a gas station in ninety minutes anyway," she said when he climbed in.

"Gas station coffee tastes like a penny."

"You've never met a coffee you didn't drink."

"I've never met one I didn't finish. There's a difference."

She backed out of the driveway. He fiddled with the radio, settled on a station playing something from 1987, and did not sing, though she could tell he wanted to.

Twenty minutes in, she asked if he'd turned off the porch light. He said yes. Then, after a pause, he said probably. She turned around.

He didn't complain. He held the thermos in his lap while she drove back, and when they pulled in and saw the light glowing faintly against the morning, he said, "Well. Now we know."

"Now we know," she agreed, and went in to flip the switch.


The suitcase lay open on the bed for three days before anyone put anything in it.

"I'm bringing the gray fleece," Marisol said Thursday night, holding it up. "It's supposed to drop to fifty at night."

Daniel looked up from his phone. He'd been comparing two cabins outside Asheville for the better part of an hour, both of them nearly identical, both of them $180 a night. "The one with the deck has better reviews, but it's forty minutes from town."

"Forty minutes of what, though? Highway or that windy road?"

He zoomed in on the map. "Windy road."

"Then the other one."

He booked it, and she heard the little confirmation chime and felt the trip become real in a way it hadn't been.

They left Friday at four-thirty, which meant they hit the worst of it on I-40, brake lights stacked up past the airport exit. Daniel drove because he always drove the first leg. Marisol had made a playlist but they ended up listening to a podcast about a bank robbery instead, and when it ended neither of them started anything else. The quiet was fine.

They stopped in Statesville for gas and she went inside for coffee and came back with two coffees and a bag of Combos.

"I didn't ask for Combos."

"You'll eat half of them."

He ate more than half.

The cabin key was in a lockbox and the code didn't work the first two times because Daniel kept mistyping the four. Marisol took the phone, read the digits aloud slowly, and it opened.

Inside smelled like cedar and, faintly, like a previous dog. There was a note on the counter about the septic system. The deck was smaller than the photos suggested.

"It's fine," Marisol said, dropping her bag.

"It's fine," Daniel agreed, and went to find where they'd put the good pillow.


The map was spread across the kitchen table, weighted down at one corner by the sugar bowl, which Marcus thought was excessive since they both had phones.

"Two hours and forty minutes," Priya said, tracing the highway with her finger anyway. "But that's without stopping."

"We'll stop."

"We always stop." She said it like an accusation, but she was smiling. Last spring they'd tried to drive straight through to Asheville and ended up pulling over twice in the first hour—once for gas station coffee, once because Marcus spotted a hand-painted sign for peaches.

They were leaving Friday after work, which meant Thursday night was for logistics. Priya made a list on the back of an envelope: dog food to the neighbor's, mail hold, the good sunscreen from the bathroom cabinet. Marcus checked the tire pressure in the driveway while it was still light out, crouching by each wheel with the little pencil gauge his father had given him.

"Do we need the cooler?" he called through the screen door.

"For a weekend?"

"For the drive. Drinks."

She considered it. "Bring the small one."

The argument, when it came, was about the hotel. Priya had booked a place downtown, walking distance to the restaurants. Marcus had assumed they'd stay by the water. Neither of them raised their voices; they just went quiet in that way that meant something, until Priya said, "It's two nights," and Marcus said, "You're right," and meant it, mostly.

Friday at 5:40 they pulled out of the driveway. Priya drove first because she liked the highway and Marcus liked the back roads. He put his feet on the dash, then took them down when she looked over.

Forty minutes in, he said, "There's a place up here that does milkshakes."

She was already slowing for the exit.


The Thermos Question

Dana found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they hadn't used in three years.

"We have phones," Marcus said from the kitchen doorway.

"I like seeing the whole state at once." She spread it on the table, smoothing the crease that ran through Pittsburgh. "Two and a half hours if we leave by nine. Four if we leave at eleven, because of the tunnels."

Marcus made a noise that meant he'd heard her but wasn't committing to nine. He was assembling a cooler on the counter—two sandwiches, a bag of baby carrots he'd bought optimistically on Tuesday, four seltzers.

"Do we bring the thermos?"

"For what?"

"Coffee. For the drive."

"There's a Sheetz twenty minutes in."

"There's a Sheetz everywhere," Dana said. "That's not a reason."

He filled the thermos.

The cabin belonged to his cousin Ray, who charged them nothing and asked only that they check the crawl space for chipmunks. Dana packed a fleece, then unpacked it, then packed it again after checking the forecast. Marcus stood in the bedroom holding two pairs of boots, trying to remember whether the trail past the creek was muddy in October or whether he was thinking of a different year entirely.

They left at 9:40. Marcus drove. Dana held the atlas in her lap without opening it and read him a text from his mother about a neighbor's surgery.

Outside Somerset the fields went gold and low. Dana poured coffee into the thermos cap and handed it over, and Marcus took it with his left hand, steering with his knee for the second it took, which she hated and didn't mention.

"Good call on the thermos," he said.

"I know."

She kept the cap for herself after that, refilling it slowly, watching the wind turbines turn against a sky that hadn't decided about rain.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a question neither of them wanted to answer first.

"Two nights," Dana said. "You don't need three pairs of shoes."

Marcus held up the hiking boots. "The trail by the cabin. You said we'd walk it."

"I said maybe." But she took the boots and wedged them into the corner anyway, then rolled a sweater around them the way her mother had taught her, decades ago, in a house neither of them had seen in years.

He went to check the coffee maker again. It was off. It had been off the first two times. In the kitchen he stood a moment listening to the refrigerator hum, then wrote a note for the neighbor kid about the mail, taped it to the door, peeled it off, rewrote it because his handwriting had gotten bad.

"Did you print the reservation?" Dana called.

"It's on my phone."

"Print it. The signal drops past Millerton."

He printed it. She was right about the signal; she was right about most logistical things, which was either a comfort or a small daily humiliation depending on how he'd slept.

They left at 9:40, forty minutes later than planned, which was earlier than usual. Dana drove the first leg. Marcus fiddled with the radio, settled on a station playing songs from before either of them could vote, and didn't sing, though she could tell he wanted to.

At the gas station outside Fenwick they split a bag of pretzels and argued mildly about whether to stop for lunch or push through. They pushed through. At mile ninety-two the farmland opened up on both sides, brown and stubbled, and Dana put her hand on his knee without looking over.

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

"It was my idea."

"That's what I said."


The Thermos Debate

Marisol found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging.

"It's from 2009," she said, carrying it into the kitchen.

Dev looked up from his laptop. "Roads don't move that much."

"Bridges wash out."

"Not the ones between here and Asheville." He turned the screen toward her anyway, showing the route he'd mapped: four hours and twenty minutes, no tolls, one stop for gas in Statesville. "We could leave Friday at three if you can get out early."

"I can get out at three-thirty. Reyes has a thing at four and I said I'd cover the phones for twenty minutes."

"Three-thirty then. That puts us in around eight."

Marisol opened the atlas anyway and traced I-40 with her finger, out of habit more than need. Her mother had taught her to do that. "Do we want to eat before or after?"

"After. There's that place with the trout."

"That was in Boone."

Dev frowned. "Was it?"

They packed Thursday night, which was Marisol's rule after the Savannah trip. Dev put the good thermos on the counter and she moved it to the sink.

"That one leaks."

"It's leaked once."

"Once is the whole point of a thermos."

He took the smaller green one instead, the one from his old office, and stood at the counter measuring coffee grounds for the morning while she rolled two sweaters into the duffel. The forecast said fifty-eight and rain Saturday. She packed the rain jacket, then the second rain jacket, because Dev never remembered his.

Friday at 3:47 they pulled out of the driveway. Dev backed down slowly, checking the mirror twice. Marisol held two coffees and waited until they hit the main road to hand him his.

"Left at the light," she said.

"I know."

"I know you know."

He took the left. She put her feet up on the dash and opened the atlas across her knees, just to look at it.


The suitcase lay open on the bed for two days before either of them put anything in it.

"Do I need the hiking boots?" Marcus asked Thursday night, holding one up. "The trail's only two miles."

Priya looked up from her laptop. "It rained Tuesday. It'll be muddy."

"Two miles of mud."

"Bring them. If you don't, you'll complain, and I'll have to hear it."

He put them in. She went back to comparing two motels in Galena, both with the same three-and-a-half stars, one with a hot tub that a reviewer described as "functional." They booked the other one.

Friday afternoon Marcus left work early and got stuck in traffic anyway. By the time he pulled into the driveway, Priya had loaded the cooler—turkey sandwiches, two apples, a bag of pretzels she'd bought specifically because he liked the flat kind, not the twisted ones.

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

"It's a three-day trip."

"My mother always turned off the water heater."

"Your mother also unplugged the toaster."

They didn't turn it off. Priya locked the front door twice, once with the key and once with the deadbolt, then stood a moment on the step with her hand on the knob, doing the thing she did where she reviewed the house room by room in her head.

"Stove," Marcus said from the car.

"I know. It's off."

They took I-88 west, and the suburbs thinned into corn. Priya put on a podcast about a hotel fire in 1946 and Marcus said it was a strange thing to listen to on the way to a hotel, and she said that was the point. Around Rochelle they stopped for gas and he bought two coffees without asking, hers with three sugars, and she took it without comment and held both cups while he pumped.


The Friday Before

Marisol found the cooler in the garage, behind the Christmas boxes, still holding a faint smell of last summer's lake trip. She hauled it inside and set it on the kitchen floor.

"We don't need that," Dev said, looking up from his laptop. "It's two nights."

"We need it for the drive. Gas station food is a scam."

He conceded without much fight, because she was right about gas station food and because he had a call at four he hadn't mentioned yet. He mentioned it now.

"Four? So we're leaving at five-thirty." She started opening cabinets. "That puts us in Asheville around ten."

"Nine-forty if I drive."

"Nine-forty if you speed."

They packed the way they always did, which was to say separately and with mutual suspicion. Dev put in one duffel, a book he wouldn't read, and his running shoes. Marisol packed two sweaters because mountains, a rain jacket because forecasts lie, and the good pillow, which she refused to travel without.

At four-fifteen, while he was on the call, she made turkey sandwiches and cut an apple into slices, then put the slices in a container with a splash of lemon juice so they wouldn't brown. She texted their neighbor Kelly about the mail. She watered the fern by the window, which was mostly dead but not entirely.

Dev came out at five-oh-two, apologizing. They loaded the car. He backed out of the driveway, then stopped.

"Did you turn off the coffee maker?"

She thought about it. "I think so."

He put the car in park and went inside. He came back out, got in, and said nothing.

"Was it on?"

"It was on."

"Okay."

They merged onto the highway at 5:19. She unwrapped a sandwich, handed him half, and turned on the radio, low, while the light went orange over the interstate.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, buried under a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. He carried it to the kitchen table and spread it open while Dana rinsed the breakfast dishes.

"Two and a half hours if we leave by nine," he said. "Three if we stop at that farm stand."

"We're stopping at the farm stand." She dried her hands on a dish towel. "Last time you promised and then drove right past it."

"Last time you were asleep."

"I was resting my eyes."

He circled the town on the map with a pencil, though they both knew the way. Dana went upstairs and started pulling clothes from the dresser. Marcus followed and stood in the doorway.

"Do we need the good jacket?"

"For what? We're going to look at leaves."

"There's the restaurant Saturday."

She considered this, then folded the navy blazer into the bottom of the duffel. "Bring the gray sweater. It's supposed to drop to forty at night."

They argued briefly about the cooler—Marcus said the inn had a mini fridge, Dana said the mini fridge would be full of eight-dollar water bottles—and the cooler went into the trunk. She packed cheese, crackers, two apples, and the last of the coffee from the good bag.

At 9:20 Marcus backed out of the driveway, then stopped.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"Did you?"

He put it in park. Dana went inside, checked the door, the stove, the coffee maker, and came back out with her sunglasses, which she'd left on the counter.

"Locked," she said, buckling in.

They took the highway north with the windows cracked. Dana held the atlas in her lap without opening it. Around eleven, Marcus put on his turn signal for the farm stand without saying anything, and she reached over and squeezed his knee.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, under a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away.

"You know we have phones," Priya said from the kitchen table, where she was scrolling through cabin listings.

"I like seeing the whole thing at once." He spread it across the counter, flattening the crease with his palm. "How far is Galena?"

"Three hours, maybe. But there's this place near Mineral Point that's ninety a night." She turned the laptop toward him. The photos showed a small A-frame with a woodstove and a deck that looked like it might not survive another winter.

"Does it have heat besides the stove?"

"It says baseboard."

"Then book it."

They left Friday after she got off work, which meant leaving at six-fifteen instead of five, which meant hitting traffic on the interstate anyway. Marcus drove the first leg. Priya had packed a bag of pretzels and two apples and forgotten to bring the good podcast headphones, so they listened to the radio until it dissolved into static somewhere past Rockford.

"We should have gotten gas in town," she said.

"There's a station in twenty miles. I checked."

"You checked, or you're assuming?"

"I checked." He had checked. He felt fine about it.

They stopped anyway, at a Kwik Trip with fluorescent lights that made everyone look ill. Priya bought coffee she didn't want and a bag of cheese curds she did. Marcus washed the windshield with the squeegee, working at a spot of bug residue near the wiper.

"You missed a place," she said, pointing through the glass.

He went over it again.

By nine they were on a gravel road with the headlights catching fenceposts, and Priya read the directions off her phone while the signal came and went. The cabin was smaller than the photos. The key was under a flowerpot, exactly where the host said it would be.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they hadn't taken down until March.

"We could just use the phone," Priya said from the kitchen table, where she was writing a list on the back of an envelope.

"I like seeing it laid out." He spread the atlas across the counter, flattening Ohio with his palm. "Two and a half hours if we leave by nine."

"Nine is optimistic."

"Nine-thirty, then."

She added *sunscreen* to the list, then crossed it out, then wrote it again. The cabin they'd rented had a wood stove and a screened porch and, according to the listing, a resident cat that came and went. Priya had read the reviews twice. Marcus hadn't read them at all, which she found either restful or infuriating depending on the day.

They packed Friday night. He took the duffel, she took the tote. He put in three shirts for two days and she didn't say anything about it. She put in a paperback she'd been carrying to and from work for six weeks and he didn't say anything about that either.

"Do we bring coffee or buy coffee?"

"Bring," he said. "There's a grinder there. It said so."

"It said *coffee maker*. That's not the same."

He conceded, and ground the beans at eleven at night, the noise startling the dog, who had to be reassured on the kitchen floor for a full minute.

They left at nine-forty. Marcus drove the first stretch while Priya held the coffee between her knees and read the exit signs out loud, not because he needed them but because she liked saying the names. Zanesville. Cambridge. Old Washington.

Somewhere past the second rest stop she fell asleep with her hand on his thigh, and he turned the radio down without changing the station.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging.

"They still print these?" Priya asked from the kitchen table, where she was scrolling through cabin listings on her laptop.

"It's from 2009. Half these roads probably don't exist." He sat down across from her anyway and opened it to Pennsylvania. "What are we looking at?"

"There's one near Jim Thorpe for one-forty a night. Two bedrooms, which we don't need."

"What about the one you sent me yesterday?"

"Booked." She turned the screen toward him. "This one has a wood stove. But the reviews mention mice."

"Everything has mice." He squinted at the photos. The porch looked decent. "How far is that from here?"

"Two and a half hours if we leave before Friday rush."

They booked it. Marcus put a reminder in his phone to email his manager about leaving early, then immediately worried it would look bad, then decided it wouldn't.

Thursday night they packed. Priya laid out clothes on the bed in two stacks and kept adding to hers.

"It's two nights," Marcus said.

"What if it rains and everything gets wet?"

"Then we come home."

She put back one sweater. He carried the cooler up from the basement and rinsed it out in the tub, and they argued mildly about whether to buy groceries here or stop at a store up there. Here won, because the coupons were here.

Friday afternoon he loaded the car while she went through the house unplugging things. She checked the stove twice. He didn't say anything about it.

The traffic on I-78 was worse than they'd planned for. Priya read aloud from the cabin's check-in instructions, which mentioned a gate code and a gravel driveway that "may require caution." Marcus said they'd figure it out. She said that was what he always said, and then reached over and turned the radio down so they could keep talking.


The forecast promised sun on Saturday, which was all Marisol needed. She pulled up a map on her laptop Thursday night and turned it toward Dev, who was rinsing a pan.

"Three hours to the cabin place, or five to the coast," she said.

"Three." He shook water off his hands. "I don't want to spend the whole trip in the car."

They booked the cabin for two nights, $178 total, and she screenshotted the confirmation because the cell service up there was supposedly bad. Dev said he'd handle food. Marisol said she'd handle everything else, which mostly meant remembering the towels.

Friday after work they packed. Dev filled a cooler with eggs, a carton of half-and-half, ground coffee, two steaks, and a bag of salad he admitted he'd probably throw out on Sunday. Marisol went back and forth on whether to bring the good pillow and finally brought it, wedging it behind the driver's seat.

"Did you turn the water heater down?" she asked from the doorway.

"It's fine for two days."

"It's four dollars."

He went and turned it down.

They left at 5:40 and hit traffic almost immediately, sitting through three cycles of the same light near the on-ramp. Marisol put on a podcast about a bank robbery. Dev drove. Around the second hour the light went orange over the hills and they stopped at a gas station where he got gas and she got a bag of pretzels and a Diet Coke she'd deny drinking later.

"You want me to drive?" she asked.

"I'm good."

The last twenty minutes were on gravel. The cabin had a lockbox with a code that didn't work until Dev tried it a second time, more slowly. Inside it smelled like cedar and old smoke. Marisol found the light switch. Dev carried in the cooler and set it on the kitchen floor with a grunt.

"Okay," she said. "Not bad."


The rain had stopped by the time Marcus finished loading the cooler into the trunk. He wedged it behind the spare tire cover, then stood back and frowned at the arrangement.

"You're going to have to move that," Priya said from the driveway, holding two travel mugs. "My bag doesn't fit sideways."

"It fits if you angle it."

"It doesn't." She handed him a mug and set her duffel on the pavement, and they both looked at the trunk for a moment like it was a puzzle neither wanted to solve first. Marcus finally slid the cooler left, and the duffel went in, and neither of them said anything about it.

They'd decided on the cabin two weeks ago, mostly because Priya's sister had mentioned it and because they'd realized in August that they hadn't left the county since March. Three hours north. Marcus had printed directions, which Priya teased him about, and then he pointed out the last time they'd lost service on Route 9 and she conceded it wasn't the worst idea.

At the gas station off the highway, she went in for coffee and came out with coffee and a bag of pretzel sticks and a scratch-off ticket.

"You never buy those."

"Vacation rules." She scratched it against the dashboard with a quarter and lost two dollars, which she seemed pleased about anyway.

Around the second hour the trees started closing in and the radio thinned out to static. Priya put on the playlist she'd made, which was mostly songs Marcus had never liked, and he let it run.

"Do we have the key code?" she asked.

"It's in the email."

"Which is on your phone, which is at four percent."

He reached over and opened the glove box, where he'd put the printout, and let her find it herself.


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

"You packed the charger?" Denise asked, standing in the doorway with her arms full of pillows.

Marcus patted his back pocket, then his front, then went back inside. She heard the junk drawer rattle.

They'd been planning the trip for three weeks, ever since Denise's sister mentioned the cabin was sitting empty. Two nights in Boone. Nothing elaborate. Marcus had wanted to leave Thursday and take a personal day, but Denise had a dentist appointment she'd already rescheduled twice, so Friday it was.

"Found it." He came out holding the cord like a trophy. "It was under the mail."

"Of course it was."

The cooler went in first, behind the driver's seat where it wouldn't slide. Denise had made turkey sandwiches and cut up a cantaloupe, and Marcus had added a six-pack of the beer he liked, the one she thought tasted like pennies. Neither of them commented on the other's contribution.

"Did you turn the thermostat up?"

"Seventy-eight."

"Seventy-eight's fine."

They pulled out of the driveway at 2:20. Marcus drove the first leg because he always did, and Denise put her feet on the dash until he gave her a look, and she put them down.

Somewhere past Winston-Salem she read him the reviews of a barbecue place off the highway, and he said it sounded fine but he wasn't hungry yet, and forty minutes later he said he was hungry and she said they'd passed it already.

They stopped instead at a gas station with a Bojangles attached. Marcus got chicken. Denise got a biscuit and ate half of his fries.

"This is nice," she said, in the parking lot, sun going orange over the pines.

"We're an hour and a half from home."

"Still."

He handed her the last fry.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage on Thursday night, wedged behind a bin of Christmas lights. She hauled it inside and set it on the kitchen floor, where Dev was scrolling through his phone at the table.

"There's a mildew smell," she said. "Do we have that spray?"

"Under the sink. The blue one." He didn't look up. "The cabin says check-in is after four. So if we leave by ten we'll have time to stop."

"Stop where?"

"That barbecue place. The one off 64 with the pig on the sign."

Marisol scrubbed the cooler lid with a sponge. "You said that was mediocre."

"I said the coleslaw was mediocre."

They packed that night, mostly. Dev put together a bag of things he considered essential: playing cards, a headlamp, the good bottle opener, a paperback he'd been failing to finish since April. Marisol handled food, which meant she stood in front of the open refrigerator for a long time making decisions about eggs.

"Do you want to do breakfast there or find somewhere?"

"There," he said. "I don't want to drive in the morning."

Friday they left at ten forty. Dev drove the first hour with the windows down until Marisol said her hair was becoming a problem, and then they used the air conditioning, which made the car smell faintly like pennies. She read him things off her phone—a story about a mayor, a message from her sister about a birthday party in September.

"Are we going to that?"

"We're going."

They stopped for gas outside Wilkesboro. Marisol went in for coffee and came back with coffee and a bag of peanut M&M's, which she opened without offering, then offered.

The barbecue place had a line. They waited in it, standing close together in the heat, and Dev held her hand loosely, the way he did when he wasn't thinking about it.


Marcus found the road atlas in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never returned to the attic. He carried it to the kitchen table, where Priya was already scrolling through her phone.

"Rhinebeck," she said. "Two hours, maybe less if we leave before nine."

"We could do Cold Spring instead. Shorter drive."

"You said last time Cold Spring was too crowded."

He shrugged and opened the atlas anyway, though he knew it was fifteen years out of date. He liked the paper. Priya reached over and turned it to the New York page, then went back to her phone, comparing two inns with nearly identical photographs of white bedding.

"This one has a bathtub," she said. "This one has breakfast included."

"Bathtub."

"You never take baths."

"You do."

She booked the one with the bathtub. Sixty-eight dollars more, which she mentioned twice, once while entering the credit card number and once while brushing her teeth that night.

Saturday morning they were late, but only by forty minutes. Marcus loaded the car while Priya stood in the kitchen deciding whether to bring the good camera. She brought it. She also brought a canvas bag with two apples, a bag of almonds, and a paperback she'd been carrying to and from work for a month without opening.

At the first gas station past the county line, Marcus filled the tank and Priya went inside for coffee. She came back with two cups and a package of red licorice.

"They didn't have oat milk."

"That's fine."

"It's not fine, it's just what they had."

He pulled onto the highway. Priya put her feet on the dashboard, then took them down when he glanced over. The licorice sat unopened between them for the first thirty miles, and then she opened it, and they ate the whole package before Poughkeepsie.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage behind the Christmas boxes, still smelling faintly of the lake from two summers ago. She hauled it inside and set it by the door.

"We're only going for two nights," Dev said, looking up from his laptop at the kitchen table. "Do we need the big one?"

"We need it if you want beer that isn't warm."

He conceded the point. They had settled on Asheville because it was four hours away and neither of them had to plan much. Dev booked a room at a motel with a decent photo of the pool, though the pool would be closed in October. Marisol wrote a list on the back of an envelope: phone chargers, the good sunscreen, her hiking boots, the aspirin.

"Do we stop in Charlotte or push through?" she asked.

"Push through. I'd rather get there before dark."

"Then we eat before we leave."

They ate leftover chicken and rice standing at the counter, which annoyed Dev, who liked to sit, but he didn't say anything. Marisol texted their neighbor Renata about the mail and got back a thumbs-up and a picture of Renata's cat. Dev carried the cooler out to the trunk, then came back for the duffel bags, then went back a third time because Marisol remembered the pillows.

"You always forget your pillow," she said.

"I forgot it once."

"You forgot it in Savannah and complained for two days."

The car smelled like the pine air freshener that had been hanging there since spring. Dev backed out of the driveway slowly, checking twice for the kid across the street who rode his scooter without looking. Marisol plugged her phone into the aux cord and scrolled without choosing anything for a full mile.

At the light on Beckett Road, she finally picked something old, and Dev laughed once, quietly, and turned it up.


The Friday Before

Renée had the map app open on the kitchen table, though she already knew the route. Two hours forty minutes to Galena, less if they left before four. She'd printed the reservation confirmation anyway, because Marcus always claimed his phone would die.

"We could take 20 instead," Marcus said, standing at the sink with a coffee mug he'd been rinsing for longer than a mug required rinsing. "Avoid the toll."

"It adds thirty-five minutes."

"It adds twenty-five."

She looked up at him. He shrugged and set the mug in the drying rack. "Fine. Toll road."

The bag situation took longer than it should have. Marcus wanted to bring the big duffel; Renée pointed out they'd be gone two nights and the big duffel encouraged overpacking, and then they'd have to haul it up the inn's narrow staircase, the one from the photos with the crooked banister. He conceded but brought his hiking boots anyway, which she didn't argue about, though she noted the forecast said rain Saturday afternoon.

At 3:40 they were in the car. Marcus drove. Renée managed the aux cord and read the inn's confirmation email aloud — check-in until nine, breakfast at eight, no elevator, as she'd said.

"Did we leave the porch light?" he asked at the stop sign.

"I got it."

"The one in the hallway?"

"That one I didn't."

He didn't turn around. It was a hallway light. They merged onto the highway behind a landscaping trailer and stayed there for four miles before Marcus found a gap.

Somewhere past Rockford, Renée fell asleep with her hand still around her phone. Marcus turned the music down two notches and kept driving, and when she woke up an hour later, the sky had gone the color of a peach, and he said, "There's a Culver's at the next exit," and she said, "Yes."


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an argument waiting to happen.

"Two nights," Dana said. "You don't need four shirts."

Marcus held one up, a blue button-down with a small stain near the hem he'd never gotten out. "This one's for dinner Saturday."

"We're eating at a diner on Route 9."

He folded it anyway and set it in the bag. Dana let it go. She was counting phone chargers, which she always did twice, and she'd already decided not to mention that he'd forgotten to cancel the newspaper. She'd done it herself Thursday morning from the parking lot at work.

They left at 6:40, twenty minutes later than planned, because Marcus wanted to water the tomatoes and Dana couldn't find her sunglasses, which turned out to be in the car, in the cupholder, where she'd left them.

The route to the cabin took them through three towns that all looked the same: a gas station, a hardware store, a church with a marquee sign. At the second gas station Marcus filled the tank while Dana went inside and came back with coffee, two waters, and a bag of pretzels.

"You got the sourdough kind," he said.

"They didn't have the other kind."

"They always have the other kind."

"They didn't today."

He ate them anyway, driving with his left hand, holding the bag against the steering wheel. Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down because he hated that, then put them back up when he changed lanes and didn't notice.

Around nine the trees closed in on both sides of the road and the radio turned to static. Dana found a playlist on her phone from a trip they'd taken years ago and didn't say anything about it, just pressed play.

Marcus recognized the third song. He turned it up a little.


Marcy had the road atlas open on the kitchen table, though her phone sat right there with maps on it. She liked the paper, the way you could see how far away things were without pinching and dragging.

"Two hours to Galena," she said. "Maybe two and a half if we stop."

Dan was going through the fridge, holding a container of leftover rice, deciding. "We'll stop. You always want coffee at Rockford."

"That's once. That happened once."

"It's happened plenty." He put the rice back and closed the door. "What time do we want to get there? Because check-in's four, and if we leave at noon—"

"Then we're sitting in a parking lot for an hour and a half."

"Right. So one o'clock."

She wrote *1:00* on the corner of a grocery receipt, which was how they kept track of things. Dan went upstairs to find the good duffel, the one with the wheels, and came back with the wrong one.

"That's the gym bag."

"The gym bag's fine for two nights."

"It smells like the gym."

He sniffed it and conceded. Upstairs again. Marcy took the trash out while he was gone, and when she came back he'd laid out two shirts on the bed and was asking her opinion, which she gave — the blue one — knowing he'd pack both anyway.

They loaded the car Saturday morning: the duffel, her tote, a paper bag with pretzels and two bananas, a cooler with waters even though they'd buy more waters. Dan checked the back door twice. Marcy checked it once more after him, not because she doubted him but because that was the ritual.

At the corner he asked, "Left or the highway?"

"Highway."

"Highway," he agreed, and turned left, because there was a gas station that way and they'd need gas eventually, and neither of them said anything about it.


The suitcase lay open on the bed, and Dana was losing an argument with herself about whether to bring the good hiking boots.

"It's two nights," Marcus said from the doorway, holding two travel mugs. "You're not summiting anything."

"There's a trail near the cabin. The listing said moderate."

"The listing said 'nature adjacent.'" He set her mug on the dresser, where it left a ring on the wood they'd both stopped apologizing for years ago. "Bring the boots. Just don't make me carry them."

She packed them anyway, wedged against a paperback she probably wouldn't open. Marcus had been ready since seven, which annoyed her slightly, though she knew it shouldn't. He'd already loaded the cooler, checked the tire pressure, and printed the directions because the mountains ate cell service.

"Did you cancel the Sunday thing with your brother?"

"Moved it to Tuesday." He zipped his duffel. "He wasn't thrilled."

"He's never thrilled."

They locked up at 8:40, twenty minutes later than Marcus wanted and forty minutes earlier than Dana thought reasonable. She went back inside once for the phone charger and once more because she couldn't remember turning off the coffee maker. It was off.

The first hour on the interstate passed mostly in silence, the comfortable kind. Dana controlled the radio and settled on a station that faded out near Millersburg. Marcus drove with one hand and ate almonds from a bag in the console.

"Gas or breakfast first?" he asked at the exit.

"Both. There's a Sheetz."

They split a hash brown neither of them had planned to buy. Dana wiped her hands on a napkin and looked at the mountains ahead, blue and hazy and closer than they'd been an hour ago.

"Two nights," she said, testing it.

"Two nights," Marcus agreed, and merged back onto the highway.