They left later than planned, which Dana had predicted on Thursday night while folding the same two shirts twice.

"If we're on the road by eight, we hit Roanoke before lunch," Marcus had said, and she'd said, "We won't be on the road by eight," and neither of them had been wrong exactly. It was 8:40 when he backed the Corolla out, and she was still holding her coffee in both hands like something that might escape.

The cooler took up the whole back seat. Marcus had wanted to just stop somewhere, but Dana pointed out that stopping somewhere meant forty minutes and eighteen dollars, and he'd conceded the way he did, with a shrug that was mostly agreement and a little bit of keeping score.

"Did you unplug the toaster?"

"You asked me that in the driveway."

"I asked if you'd checked the door. Different question."

He checked his mirror. "It's unplugged."

They took 81 south. Dana ran the playlist for the first hour, then handed him the aux cord without being asked, which he took as a kindness. Somewhere past Harrisonburg they stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign about boiled peanuts, and Marcus bought a bag while Dana used the restroom and came back saying it was cleaner than she expected.

"You want one?"

"They're wet."

"That's the point."

She ate three.

The cabin they'd rented was small and had a photo of a bear over the couch, which they both agreed was funny in a way neither could explain. Dana claimed the side of the bed nearest the window. Marcus unpacked the cooler and discovered they'd brought mustard but no bread.

"There's a store in town," he said.

"Tomorrow," she said, already lying down. "Tomorrow's fine."

He sat on the edge of the mattress and untied his shoes.


The suitcase had been open on the bed since Thursday, which Dana thought was excessive and Marcus considered reasonable. He'd already packed two flannel shirts, a paperback he wouldn't read, and the good binoculars.

"We're going for two nights," Dana said, dropping in a sweater. "You've packed for a week in the Yukon."

"It gets cold at elevation."

"It's Gatlinburg. It's May."

They'd chosen the cabin because it was three hours away and had a hot tub in the listing photos, though Marcus suspected the photos were old. Dana had booked it on a Tuesday afternoon between meetings, texting him a screenshot with just a question mark, and he'd replied with a thumbs up because he'd been in the middle of something and it seemed easier than opinions.

Friday morning, they argued mildly about the route. Marcus wanted to take 40 the whole way. Dana wanted to cut through on the state road because of the produce stand near Newport that sold sourwood honey.

"We can stop on the way back," he said.

"They close at four. We won't be back by four."

He conceded, mostly because he'd forgotten to fill the tank the night before and didn't have leverage.

They stopped at the Kroger on Central for provisions, which took forty minutes because Dana read the labels on everything and Marcus kept adding things to the cart when she wasn't looking—pretzel crisps, a bag of limes, a rotisserie chicken they had nowhere to store.

"What's the chicken for?"

"Dinner."

"We have reservations."

He put the chicken back.

By ten they were on the road with the windows down, and Dana had the radio on a station that faded out around Dandridge. Neither of them changed it. Marcus drove with one hand and rested the other on the console, and after a while she put hers on top of it, and they didn't say anything for eleven miles.


The Friday traffic on I-80 hadn't started yet, which was the whole point of leaving at two.

"You packed the good pillow?" Renata asked, standing in the doorway with her arms full of jackets they probably wouldn't need.

Owen looked up from the trunk. "I packed a pillow."

"That's not the same answer."

He went back inside and came out with the memory foam one, and she made a small satisfied noise and got in the car. They'd booked the cabin in Nevada City three weeks ago, back when the idea of two nights away had seemed like a solution to something. Now it just seemed like a thing on the calendar, which was fine. Most good things started that way.

Owen drove. Renata handled the aux cord and the snack bag, doling out almonds like a nurse with medication. Somewhere past Vacaville she said, "We should stop at that fruit stand," and he said, "The one with the flags?" and she said yes, and they didn't, because he was in the left lane and it came up too fast.

"Next time," she said, without any real disappointment.

They argued mildly about dinner. Owen wanted to find something in town; Renata had brought pasta and a jar of sauce and thought it was ridiculous to spend forty dollars when the cabin had a kitchen. They compromised the way they always did, which was that she won and he stopped at a liquor store in Auburn for a decent bottle of red.

The cabin was smaller than the pictures and smelled like cedar and dust. Renata opened windows. Owen figured out the propane heater, which took twenty minutes and involved reading a laminated card twice.

"It's nice," she said finally, sitting on the arm of the couch.

He handed her a glass. "It's nice."

Outside, the light went orange through the pines, and neither of them said anything for a while.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage on Thursday night, still smelling faintly of last summer's lake trip. She hauled it inside and set it by the door.

"We're only gone two nights," Dev said, looking up from the laptop where he'd been comparing gas prices along Route 9. "Do we need the big one?"

"We need it if you want the leftover enchiladas."

He conceded that point. They divided the packing without discussing it—she took clothes, he took everything electrical. He wound the phone chargers into neat coils and put them in the front pocket of his backpack, where he would forget them until Sunday.

The argument, such as it was, came over the departure time. Dev wanted to leave at six a.m. to beat traffic through Hartford. Marisol pointed out that neither of them had left the house before eight since March.

"Seven," she offered.

"Six-thirty."

"Seven, and I'll drive the first hour."

He took the deal.

Friday morning they were on the road at seven-twenty, which they both privately counted as a victory. Marisol drove with the seat pushed forward more than Dev liked; he'd adjust it later without saying anything. The radio played a station that faded out somewhere past Sturbridge, and they let the static run for a mile before Dev found a podcast neither of them cared about.

They stopped at a gas station with a Dunkin' inside. Marisol got a coffee with too much cream. Dev bought a bag of pretzels and a lottery ticket, which he did on every trip and had never once won.

"Did you lock the back door?" she asked, halfway to the car.

He stopped walking. Thought about it. "Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Ninety percent."

She got in the passenger seat. "Good enough," she said, and handed him the keys.


On Thursday night, Dana spread the road atlas across the kitchen table because she didn't trust the phone's estimate. Marcus leaned over her shoulder with a beer.

"Three and a half hours," he said. "Four if we stop."

"We're stopping. I'm not driving past that pie place again."

They'd been talking about the cabin since February, when Dana's cousin mentioned it was sitting empty most weekends. Two nights, a wood stove, a lake that was probably still too cold to swim in. Marcus had wanted to leave Friday after work, but Dana pointed out that meant arriving in the dark on unfamiliar roads, and he conceded without much fight because she was right and because he'd rather sleep in.

Friday she made a list on the back of an envelope. Coffee. The good pillow. Rain jackets, because the forecast kept flickering between forty and sixty percent. Marcus went to the store and came back with two bags of charcoal, a case of seltzer, and a bag of those sour candies she pretended not to like.

"There's a grill?" he asked.

"There's a picture of a grill. From 2019."

Saturday morning they loaded the car in the gray light. Marcus insisted on packing the trunk himself, which he did with the grim precision of a man who had once fit a dresser into a hatchback. Dana stood in the driveway holding two travel mugs and her phone, checking whether they'd remembered to turn the thermostat down. They had. She checked again anyway.

At 8:40 they pulled out. Marcus took the first shift. Dana put her feet on the dash, then took them down when he glanced over. Eleven miles in, she asked if he'd locked the back door.

He thought about it. "Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Ninety percent."

She let it go. The exit signs began counting down, and the radio found something they both knew.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Dana had packed hers Thursday night; Marcus was still standing in front of the closet Saturday morning in his boxers, holding two nearly identical flannel shirts.

"Just bring both," she said.

"It's two nights."

"So bring both. You're not paying by the pound."

He brought both. Downstairs, she was pouring coffee into travel mugs and checking the printout of the cabin directions, because the last forty minutes of the drive had no service, according to the woman who owned it. Marcus thought printing directions was excessive. He'd said so Wednesday. He didn't say it again.

"Did you turn the thermostat down?"

"Fifty-eight."

"That's too low. The pipes."

"It's October, Dana."

She set it to sixty-two on her way past. He let her.

They loaded the car in the gray light—her duffel, his backpack, a grocery bag with crackers and a block of cheddar and the good mustard, a bottle of wine wrapped in a dish towel. He got the aux cable working on the third try. She adjusted her seat forward, then back to where it had been.

Twenty minutes onto the highway, she said, "Did you lock the back door?"

Marcus was quiet for a second. "I think so."

"You think so."

"I locked it Thursday and haven't opened it."

"Okay." She looked out the window at the retaining wall, the beige sound barrier, the exit for the outlet mall. Then: "The Hendersons have the key."

"They do."

She put her hand on his knee, briefly, the way she did, and took it back to hold her coffee. He merged left around a truck. The trees along the shoulder were starting to turn, not spectacular yet, just rust at the edges, and neither of them mentioned it, though both noticed.


The Friday afternoon light came in slantwise through the kitchen window while Dana counted out dog food into a plastic bag for the sitter. Behind her, Marcus stood at the counter with his phone, scrolling.

"Two nights or three?" he asked.

"Two. I have that thing Monday morning, and I don't want to drive back at ten at night."

He nodded, still scrolling. "There's a place outside Galena with a fireplace. Seventy-two hundred reviews, four point three."

"Four point three is fine."

"Four point three is a little low."

"Four point three is a real number," Dana said. "Five point zero means twelve people, all of them cousins."

He booked it. She heard the little chime and then the sigh he made when he saw the total with the fees.

They packed in separate rooms, which was the only way they'd found to do it without argument. Dana brought two sweaters and the good boots. Marcus brought seven shirts for two days and the same gray fleece he always wore, and Dana said nothing about it because they had agreed years ago that this was not a hill.

The dog watched them from the hallway with an expression of deep betrayal.

They left at four-fifteen, later than the four o'clock Marcus had wanted and earlier than the four-thirty Dana had assumed. He drove. She controlled the music and the temperature and read the exits out loud even though the GPS was already doing that.

Outside Rockford they stopped for gas and he came back with coffee and a bag of the yogurt-covered pretzels she liked, which she hadn't asked for.

"You didn't have to."

"I know," Marcus said, backing out slowly around a truck. "But you were going to want them in an hour and then I'd have to hear about it."

She opened the bag and ate one and put a second one in his hand.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a stack of paint cans they'd never opened. She carried it into the bedroom, where Dev was already folding shirts with the exaggerated precision he reserved for tasks he wanted credit for.

"Two nights," she said. "You do not need four shirts."

"Three," he said. "One's a backup."

"A backup for the backup."

He conceded one shirt and put it back in the drawer, then took it out again when she left the room. She was in the kitchen, unplugging the toaster and the coffee maker, checking the fridge for anything that would turn while they were gone. Half a rotisserie chicken went into the freezer. A bag of spinach went into the trash with a sigh.

They had reservations at a place two and a half hours north, an old inn with a wood stove and, according to the website, a resident cat. Dev had booked it in February for their anniversary and then rescheduled twice, once for a work thing and once because Marisol's mother had a scare with her blood pressure that turned out to be nothing.

At ten thirty he carried the bag to the car while she went through the house doing what she called the last lap: lights, windows, the back door, the thermostat down to sixty-two. She left a note for the neighbor kid about the mail, though she'd already texted him twice.

In the driveway, Dev was scraping a smear of pollen off the windshield with his sleeve.

"Phone charger," she said.

"Got it."

"The good one."

He held it up. She locked the front door, tried the knob, tried it again, and got in.

He backed out slowly, the way he always did, and at the stop sign at the end of their street he reached over and squeezed her knee. She put her hand over his and they turned north.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, and Marisol kept feeding it: two sweaters, because the forecast said the mountains would drop into the forties at night, then a third, because she never trusted forecasts.

"You know it's two days," Dev said from the doorway. He had a toothbrush in one hand and a phone in the other, checking the traffic on I-80 for the fourth time since breakfast.

"I know how many days it is."

"You packed four pairs of shoes."

"Three." She held up the hiking boots as evidence, then set them down, because they were heavy and the trail they'd chosen was barely a mile. She put them back anyway.

He went to shut off the water heater, which he'd read about in an article on saving energy and had adopted with the fervor of a convert. Marisol watered the pothos in the kitchen window and left a light on a timer, though the cat sitter was coming twice a day and would probably think they were fools.

At eleven they carried everything to the car. Dev arranged the bags in the trunk with an engineer's stubbornness, refusing help, then had to take it all out and start over when the cooler wouldn't fit. Marisol didn't say anything. She got in and adjusted the mirror he always moved, and found the gas station coffee sleeve she'd left in the cupholder last month.

He slid into the driver's seat and let out a breath. "Did we lock the back door?"

"You locked it. I watched you."

"Okay." He didn't move. Then he got out, jogged up the walkway, tried the handle, and came back looking sheepish. "It was locked."

"I know."

He started the engine. Down the block, someone's sprinkler was running in the middle of the day, and Marisol pointed it out, and they were still talking about it when the house disappeared behind them.


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

On Friday morning, Denise finally gave in and started folding. Two shirts, the good jeans, the sweater she always brought and never wore. Ray came in with his toothbrush already in a plastic bag, which she thought was funny, because he'd once forgotten an entire duffel at a rest stop outside Roanoke.

"Did you call Marilyn about the mail?" he asked.

"I texted her. She's picking it up Saturday and Sunday."

He nodded and set the toothbrush on top of her sweater, then moved it when she gave him a look. They had a system, sort of. She packed; he loaded. Twenty-six years had sanded down the negotiations to almost nothing.

The house made its usual noises as they went through the checklist. Ray turned the thermostat down to sixty-two. Denise unplugged the coffee maker, then plugged it back in, then unplugged it again. She checked the back door twice. The dog was already at Ray's sister's, which made the kitchen feel wrong, too quiet, no nails clicking on the tile.

"You want to drive first?" he asked at the door.

"You drive. I'll take over after we stop."

The car smelled like the pine air freshener he'd bought at the car wash. Denise put her purse in the footwell and her feet on top of it, the way she always did, and Ray backed down the driveway slower than he needed to, checking the rearview twice.

At the stop sign at the end of their street, he paused longer than the law required.

"Did we—"

"Iron's unplugged. I checked."

"Okay," he said, and turned left toward the highway, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a small, patient animal. Marisol dropped two folded sweaters into it and stepped back to assess.

"You're bringing three books," Dev said from the closet doorway, holding a pair of hiking boots by their laces. "It's two nights."

"I'm bringing options." She took the boots from him and wedged them into the corner. "You're bringing boots for a town with one main street."

"There's a trail behind the inn. I looked it up."

They'd been talking about this trip since February, when the pipes froze and they'd spent a weekend with buckets and a space heater, promising each other something better. Now it was late September, the leaves just beginning to turn along the highway north, and the inn had a fireplace in the room. That was the whole appeal. A fireplace and no Wi-Fi to speak of.

Dev went downstairs to deal with the practicalities: the thermostat, the timer on the lamp, the note for the neighbor about the mail. Marisol found the phone chargers, the good coffee in case the inn's was terrible, the ibuprofen. She zipped the suitcase and it closed on the first try, which felt like an omen.

"Did you take out the trash?" she called.

"Doing it now."

The car was cold. Dev backed down the driveway while Marisol scrolled to the playlist she'd built over the past week — mostly songs from a road trip they'd taken eleven years ago, before the house, before the mortgage, before any of it. She turned it up a little.

At the stop sign, Dev put his hand on her knee. "Did we lock the back door?"

She thought about it. "I did. I remember doing it."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

He nodded and turned onto the main road, and the house shrank behind them, and neither of them looked back.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Diane dropped in two folded sweaters, then reconsidered and took one out.

"It's supposed to be fifty-eight and rainy," Marcus said from the doorway, phone in hand. "Both days."

"Fifty-eight isn't cold."

"Fifty-eight and rainy is cold." He set the phone down and went to the closet, pulling out the gray fleece she'd bought him three Christmases ago and never seen him wear. He rolled it and wedged it along the side of the suitcase, where it fit exactly.

Downstairs, the coffee maker was still on. Diane unplugged it, checked the back door, then checked it again. Marcus was in the garage, hunting for the good umbrella—not the drugstore one that inverted in any real wind. He found it behind the recycling bin, still damp from October.

They'd booked the inn in November, back when the winter had seemed survivable and two nights away had seemed like a small thing. Now it was February and the house had that overheated, closed-up smell, and Diane found herself lingering in the front hall, looking at the mail on the table.

"Leave it," Marcus said, coming in through the kitchen. "It's bills."

"I know it's bills."

He took the suitcase from her and carried it out, and she followed with her tote and the paper bag of snacks she'd packed—almonds, two clementines, a sleeve of crackers, because he always said he wasn't hungry and then was hungry an hour in.

The car was cold. Marcus started it and let it run while Diane scraped a thin skin of frost off the rear window with a plastic card from her wallet. When she got in, he had the heat blowing and the radio down low.

"Did you lock it?"

"I locked it."

He backed out slowly. At the end of the street he paused, signaled, and turned left toward the highway.


Marguerite found the suitcase in the back of the hall closet, behind the winter coats and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging. She dragged it out and set it on the bed, where the cat immediately climbed inside.

"Out," she said. The cat did not move.

Dennis came in from the garage with the cooler, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Ice machine's still broken. I'll grab a bag at the gas station."

"Did you check the oil?"

"I checked the oil in April."

"It's September."

He went back to the garage. Marguerite folded two sweaters, then unfolded one and put it back in the drawer. The forecast said sixty-eight and clear both days, but the cabin was north and the lake would make it cold at night. She put the sweater back in.

By ten they had the car mostly loaded. Dennis had strong opinions about the trunk—the cooler flat, the bags stacked, his fishing rod along the side—and Marguerite let him have them, since she'd chosen the cabin and the dates and the route. She went back inside twice, once for her reading glasses and once because she couldn't remember whether she'd turned off the coffee maker. She had.

The neighbor's kid was skateboarding badly in the street. Dennis backed out slow, one arm across the passenger seat, and waited for him to pass.

"You have the directions?" he said.

"I have the directions."

"You have the actual key, or the code for the box?"

She held up her phone with the email open.

He nodded and turned onto Ashby Street, past the elementary school and the church with the crooked sign. Marguerite rolled her window down two inches. The house sat behind them with its lights off and the cat in the window, and neither of them looked back at it.


Marguerite found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind the winter coats, and hauled it into the bedroom where Dev was folding shirts with more precision than the occasion required.

"Two days," she said. "You've packed four shirts."

"Three. One's for driving." He held it up—the soft gray henley she'd bought him two birthdays ago, now thinning at the elbows. "Non-negotiable."

She let it go. Outside, the October morning was doing something gorgeous with the maple in the neighbor's yard, and she wanted to be in the car already, north of the city, past the outlet malls and into the part of the highway where the billboards thinned out.

Dev went downstairs to deal with the coffee maker, which he unplugged, and the thermostat, which he set to sixty-two, and the mail, which he'd already asked Bertie next door to collect. Marguerite came down with the bag and found him standing in the kitchen holding a half-carton of milk, calculating.

"Just pour it out," she said.

"It's good until Thursday."

"We'll be back Sunday night."

He poured it out anyway, rinsed the carton, put it in the recycling. She watched him do it and thought, not for the first time, that she'd married a man who couldn't leave a room without making it slightly better than he found it.

They loaded the car. She'd printed the confirmation for the inn, though he had it on his phone, and she'd brought a paper map, though neither of them would open it. He took the driver's seat because the first leg was interstate and he liked interstate.

At the end of the driveway he stopped, looked at her.

"Did we lock the back door?"

"You locked it. I watched you."

He nodded and pulled out, and the house got smaller behind them, and by the second stoplight neither of them was thinking about it at all.


The suitcase lay open on the bed for two days before either of them put anything in it. Marguerite had made the reservation in February, when the winter felt endless and a bed-and-breakfast in the Berkshires seemed like the only reasonable response.

Now it was April, and Dennis was standing in the hallway holding two flannel shirts, asking whether it would be cold at night.

"It'll be forty-something," she said. "Bring both."

He brought both. He also brought a paperback he'd been failing to read since Christmas, a phone charger, and, at the last minute, the good binoculars, because there was supposed to be a pond behind the inn and he had opinions about herons.

Marguerite packed the way she did everything, in one deliberate pass, and then spent twenty minutes on the parts that weren't packing. She emptied the coffee grounds. She checked the back door twice. She wrote a note for their neighbor Denise about the mail, then rewrote it because the first one sounded curt.

"Do you have the confirmation?" Dennis called from the driveway.

"On my phone."

"Print it."

"It's not 2004."

He laughed and kept loading the car anyway, which took longer than it should have because he insisted on putting the bags in a particular arrangement, and because he stopped to move the recycling bin out of the way of the mower he wasn't going to use for a week.

At ten-fifteen they were both in the car. Marguerite adjusted the mirror even though she wasn't driving. Dennis backed down the driveway, stopped, and went back inside to check the stove. It was off. It was always off.

When he returned, she handed him a coffee she'd made while he was gone.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," she said.

They pulled out onto the road, and the house got smaller behind them, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Dana packed it the way she packed everything—rolled shirts, socks tucked into shoes, the toiletry bag zipped and standing sentry in the corner. Marcus wandered in with two shirts on hangers and held them up.

"Blue or green?"

"For two days? Bring both. There's room."

He laid them flat across the top, undoing her careful geometry, and she let him. Downstairs, the coffee maker hissed. They had agreed to leave by eight and it was already eight-fifteen, which was, historically, on time for them.

Dana went through the house doing the ritual: thermostat down to sixty-two, coffee pot unplugged, the back door checked twice because checking it once had never once been enough. Marcus carried the bag out to the driveway and stood a moment in the October air, breath fogging, looking at the maple that had finally gone red overnight. He came back in for the cooler.

"Did you text Ellen about the mail?"

"I texted her yesterday. She's got the key."

"And the plants?"

"Dana. Two days. They can be thirsty for two days."

She conceded this. In the kitchen she wiped down a counter that did not need wiping, then stopped herself, laughed a little, and set the sponge in its dish.

Marcus backed the car out while she locked the front door and tested the knob. She got in, buckled, and put a paper bag of muffins between the seats.

"Cabin's about three hours," he said. "Maybe three and a half with lunch."

"There's construction on 81. My phone says take the older road."

"The scenic one."

"The slower one."

He pulled onto the street. At the stop sign he glanced over, and she was already unwrapping a muffin for him, and neither of them said anything else until the highway.


The suitcase had been open on the bed since Thursday, collecting the things Priya kept remembering: the good sunscreen, a paperback she'd started twice, the phone charger she always forgot until she was already on the highway.

Marcus came in Friday afternoon carrying the cooler, which he set down in the doorway and then, after a look from her, moved out of the doorway.

"Did you cancel the paper?"

"There's no paper," he said. "There hasn't been a paper since 2019."

"The mail, then."

"It's two days. The mail can pile up for two days."

She zipped the suitcase and sat on it, which wasn't necessary, but she liked the ceremony of it. Marcus went through the house doing his circuit: coffee maker off, back door locked, thermostat nudged up to seventy-eight because the cat could handle seventy-eight and the neighbor's kid was coming to feed her anyway. He checked the stove twice. He always checked the stove twice, and Priya had stopped teasing him about it years ago, mostly.

They loaded the car in the driveway heat, Marcus arranging the trunk with more strategy than the trip required. Priya put the cooler behind the passenger seat, filled it with two waters and the sandwiches she'd made that morning, and left the crusts off his because she knew.

"Wallet," she said.

He patted his back pocket. "Wallet."

"Sunglasses."

He patted his shirt, then his head, then found them on the roof of the car.

They stood a minute in the driveway with the doors open, letting the heat roll out. The house looked the way houses look when you're about to leave them — settled, indifferent, fine without you.

Priya got in and adjusted the vent. Marcus backed down the driveway slowly, the way he did, checking the mirror more than he needed to, and turned onto the street.

"Two days," she said.

"Two whole days," he said, and merged.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed.

"Two nights," Dana said, holding up a fourth shirt. "How is this hard?"

Marcus leaned in the doorway with a coffee mug, already dressed, already smug about it. "It's hard because you're packing for weather that doesn't exist. It's going to be fifty-eight and drizzling. That's the entire forecast."

"There could be a nice restaurant."

"In Asheville, in March, there will be a nice restaurant, and you will wear the black sweater, because you always wear the black sweater." He set down the mug and pulled the black sweater from the closet, folding it badly, on purpose.

She took it back and refolded it. "Did you cancel the newspaper?"

"There's no newspaper. There hasn't been a newspaper since 2019."

"Then did you text Rachel about the cat?"

He hadn't. He texted Rachel about the cat.

They moved through the house in the particular choreography of departure: unplugging the toaster, checking the back door twice, arguing briefly about whether the thermostat should sit at sixty or sixty-two. Dana won, at sixty-two, on the grounds that frozen pipes cost more than heat. Marcus loaded the car and discovered the trunk still held two folding chairs from October.

At nine-forty, they stood in the driveway while the garage door rattled down. The cat watched from the front window with visible contempt.

"Phone, wallet, keys," Marcus recited.

"Reservation confirmation. Chargers. The good pillow."

"You brought the pillow?"

"I brought the pillow."

He backed out slowly, pausing at the end of the driveway the way he always did, one beat longer than necessary, as if the house might call them back. It didn't. Dana found a station playing something from 1997 and left it there, and neither of them said anything for the first ten miles, which was, in its way, the whole point of going.


Maya found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. She hauled it out and set it on the bed, and it sat there open and empty for most of the morning while she went back and forth about the weather.

"Fifties and rain Saturday," Devon called from the kitchen. "Bring the boots."

"The rain boots or the ones I like?"

"Bring both. It's a car, not a plane."

That was the good part about driving. She packed both pairs, plus two sweaters, plus the book she'd been failing to read since February. Devon was making sandwiches for the road, cutting them in halves and wrapping them in wax paper the way his mother used to. He put an apple in the bag, then took it out, then put it back in.

They went through the list neither of them had written down but both had memorized. Thermostat down to fifty-eight. Coffee maker unplugged. The neighbor, Rosalind, had the spare key and instructions about the cat, which mostly amounted to leaving her alone and refilling the water dish. Devon checked the back door twice. Maya checked it a third time on her way past, and he pretended not to notice.

Loading the car took four minutes and a small argument about whether the cooler should go behind the driver's seat or in the trunk. The trunk won. Maya got the aux cord situated. Devon backed down the driveway, then stopped halfway, and they looked at each other.

"The garage door," she said.

He put it in park, walked back up, and hit the button. The door rolled down while he stood there watching it, hands in his pockets, and then he jogged back to the car.

"Okay," he said, buckling in. "Now."

They turned left at the corner and got on the highway by ten forty.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Marisol dropped in two folded sweaters, then reconsidered and removed one.

"It's only two days," she said.

Dev, in the doorway with a coffee mug, nodded as though this were profound. "The cabin has a fireplace. You'll want the wool one."

She put it back.

They had booked the place in November, when the winter still felt theoretical, and now it was February and they were leaving Thursday morning to beat the traffic out of the city. Dev had spent the previous night making a playlist he would abandon forty minutes into the drive. Marisol had spent it writing a list for the neighbor: *feed Basil twice, water only the fern by the window, mail is fine to leave.*

At seven-fifteen, Dev carried the bag down while Marisol went room to room performing the small liturgy of departure — unplugging the toaster, checking the back door, turning the thermostat down to fifty-eight and then, thinking of the pipes, back up to sixty-two. Basil watched from the top of the stairs with the flat contempt of a cat who has seen suitcases before.

"Did you take your inhaler?" she called.

"Front pocket."

"The actual front pocket, or the front pocket in your mind?"

A pause. Then footsteps back up the stairs.

Outside, the car had frosted over. Dev scraped the windshield while Marisol started the engine and held her hands over the vents. When he got in, his ears were red and he smelled like cold air.

"Neighbor has the key?"

"Under the flowerpot. She knows."

He backed out slowly, both of them checking the house one last time as it slid past the passenger window — porch light on, curtains drawn, nothing left burning.

At the stop sign, Marisol reached over and put her hand on his knee.

"Coffee first," she said.

"Obviously," said Dev, and turned left.


Marisol found the duffel bags in the hall closet, behind the winter coats and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting up. She set them on the bed while Dev stood in front of the open dresser, holding two nearly identical gray sweaters, deciding.

"It's supposed to rain Saturday," she said.

"Then I'll bring both."

She laughed and went to the bathroom to gather the small things—toothbrushes, his allergy pills, the contact solution she always forgot until they were an hour down the highway. She lined them up on the counter and put them in the same zippered pouch they'd used since their honeymoon, the lining stained blue from a pen that had exploded years ago.

Dev handled the kitchen. He filled two travel mugs with coffee, poured the rest down the drain, and unplugged the toaster and the coffee maker. He checked the back door twice. Then he texted their neighbor Renata, confirming she'd come by Saturday morning to feed the cat, and left a scrawled note on the counter anyway, with the vet's number underlined.

By nine-thirty the bags were by the front door. Marisol did a last walk-through, turning off lamps, adjusting the thermostat, pressing her hand flat against the bedroom window to make sure it was locked. The cat watched all of it from the top of the stairs with obvious suspicion.

Dev carried the bags out and arranged them in the trunk, wedging the cooler between them so it wouldn't slide. Marisol locked the front door, tested the knob, then tested it again.

"Ready?" he asked from the driver's seat.

She got in and buckled her seatbelt, then handed him his coffee. "Ready."

He backed out of the driveway slowly, both of them looking at the house as it slid past the window, and then at the road ahead.


Marisol found the duffel bags in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd meant to donate two years running. She dropped one on the bed and started making piles: two shirts, jeans, the good sweater, socks. Always an extra pair of socks.

"Are we doing the coast route or the highway?" Dev called from the bathroom, where he was hunting for the travel-size toothpaste.

"Coast, if we leave by nine. Highway if you keep looking for that toothpaste."

He came out holding it, triumphant, and she laughed and made room in the toiletry bag. He packed the way he did everything — fast, then twice more to check. Sunscreen, phone charger, the paperback he'd been carrying around for six weeks without finishing.

They'd booked two nights at a place outside Mendocino with a wood stove and no television. Marisol had found it in March and sat on the reservation for a month before mentioning it, half-expecting Dev to say the timing was wrong. He'd said yes before she finished the sentence.

She watered the plants. He took the trash to the curb and texted their neighbor about the mail. At eight-forty they stood in the kitchen doing the last inventory: keys, wallets, the cooler with sandwiches and two apples, the thermos of coffee she'd made too strong on purpose.

"Stove off?"

"Off."

"Windows?"

"Checked."

Dev locked the front door and pushed on it twice, the way his mother used to. Marisol was already in the passenger seat, feet on the dashboard, unfolding a paper map she didn't need but liked having.

He backed out of the driveway slowly, then stopped halfway down the street.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. I just wanted to remember this part."

She reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he drove on, west, toward the water.


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

Marguerite started Thursday night, folding two sweaters and the good jeans, the ones that still fit. Dale came in from the garage smelling like WD-40 and stood in the doorway watching her. "Two days," he said. "You're packing for two days."

"One of these is for the drive." She didn't look up. "The other's for dinner, if we go anywhere with tablecloths."

"We won't."

"Then it comes home clean."

He laughed and reached past her for his own things, which amounted to a stack he'd already assembled on the dresser: three shirts, socks rolled into balls, the flannel he wore in every photograph taken of him since 2009. She moved his pile into the suitcase without comment, arranging it around her sweaters like she was setting a table.

Friday morning they woke before the alarm. Dale made coffee in the travel mugs and burned two pieces of toast while Marguerite went through the house pulling plugs — the toaster, the coffee maker after he was done with it, the lamp in the front room that had scared her since she read about a fire in Duluth. She left the porch light on a timer. She wrote a note for their neighbor Ronnie about the mail and then, standing at the door, decided the note was condescending and wrote a shorter one.

"You've got the reservation number?"

"On my phone."

"Screenshot it. The mountains eat the signal."

She screenshot it.

They loaded the car at seven-fifteen. Dale backed out slow, the way he always did, and at the end of the driveway he stopped.

"Did you—"

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

"Both burners, Dale."

He pulled onto the road. She put her hand on his knee, and the house got smaller behind them.


Marisol found the duffel bags in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd meant to donate two years running. She dropped one on the bed and unzipped it.

"Two days," Owen called from the bathroom. "How many shirts is that?"

"Two shirts."

"I'm bringing three."

She let it go. He always brought three, and always wore two, and every trip he announced this discovery like it was new.

He came out holding his toothbrush and a travel bottle of shampoo, the kind he collected from hotels and never used at home. She was already folding her jeans into a tight roll, the way her mother had taught her. Owen packed by dropping things in and pressing down.

At nine they went through the list neither of them had written down. Thermostat to sixty-two. Coffee maker unplugged. The plant on the sill got a long drink it probably didn't need. Owen texted their neighbor Denise about the mail, and Denise wrote back with a thumbs-up and a photo of her cat, unprompted.

"Did you get the charger?"

"I got the charger."

"The car one, or—"

He held up both.

They loaded the trunk in the cold, breath showing. Marisol brought the cooler with sandwiches and two seltzers, because gas station food after eleven in the morning made her feel like she'd wasted something. Owen scraped a thin skin of frost off the windshield with a library card.

Back in the house for the last time, she stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at it — the counter wiped, the chairs pushed in, the quiet of a room about to be empty. Owen came up behind her, jingling the keys.

"Anything?"

"No. It's fine."

She locked the deadbolt, checked it, checked it again. Then they got in the car, and Owen backed down the driveway while she found the map on her phone, and the house shrank behind them, small and still and theirs.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Marisol dropped in two sweaters, then took one out, then put it back.

"It's Vermont in October," Dev said from the doorway, holding his coffee with both hands the way he always did. "You'll want both."

"I know. I'm negotiating with myself."

He set the mug on the dresser and started rolling his own shirts into tight cylinders, a habit from a backpacking trip they'd taken eleven years ago, before the mortgage, before the fence project that had eaten most of last summer. She still folded hers flat. Neither had ever convinced the other.

Downstairs, the coffee maker ticked as it cooled. Dev went through the checklist he kept in his head every time they left: thermostat down to sixty-two, dishwasher run, the back door deadbolted, the cat's automatic feeder loaded and tested twice because the first time they'd used it, it had jammed and Pilar next door had to come rescue Biscuit.

"Did you text Pilar?" he called up.

"Texting her now. She says she'll do the litter box Saturday morning."

Marisol came down with the bag, and he took it from her without being asked. In the driveway, the maple had gone half-orange, and a few leaves had settled on the windshield. She brushed them off while he loaded the trunk, wedging the bag against the jumper cables so it wouldn't slide.

"Charger?"

"In my pocket."

"The reservation number?"

"In my email. And screenshotted, because the signal dies after Rutland."

She laughed at that, the small laugh she saved for evidence of his planning. He backed out slowly, the way he always did, and she reached over and turned the radio down before he could ask.

Two houses in, she put her hand on his knee. Neither of them said anything for a mile, which was fine.


Marta found the suitcase in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to hanging. She hauled it out and set it on the bed, unzipping it while Daniel argued with the coffee maker in the kitchen.

"It's the filter," she called. "You put two in again."

A pause. Then: "There were two stuck together."

She packed the way she always did, in stacks — shirts, then pants, then the small zippered bag of things she'd need in the morning. Daniel came in holding two mugs, handed her one, and stood looking at the suitcase like it was a problem someone else had made.

"Two nights," he said.

"One night. Two days."

"Right." He went to the dresser and pulled out three shirts, then put one back, then took it out again.

They had booked a cabin an hour and a half north, near a lake neither of them had seen. The reservation email said check-in was after four. It was ten in the morning. Marta had already texted her sister to ask about the mail.

Daniel checked the tire pressure while Marta wiped down the counters, because she couldn't stand the thought of coming home to crumbs. She unplugged the toaster. She left one lamp on in the living room, the way her mother always had.

At eleven-forty they were in the driveway. Daniel adjusted the mirror. Marta buckled in and reached for the aux cable, which had, as always, fallen between the seats.

"Did you lock the back door?" he asked.

"You locked the back door."

He thought about it. "I locked the back door."

She found the cable. He backed out slowly, one arm across her seat, watching over his shoulder. At the stop sign he asked if she wanted to get sandwiches on the way, and she said yes, and they turned left instead of right, which added six minutes and neither of them minded.


Maya found the suitcase in the hall closet, still holding a receipt from their last trip, a diner in Ohio, eighteen months ago. She set it open on the bed and started making piles: two shirts, the good jeans, the sweater James always said made her look like a librarian, which she had decided was a compliment.

James was in the kitchen, working through his own list. He filled the dog's bowls and wrote a note for the neighbor kid, then wrote it again because the first version had too many exclamation points. He unplugged the toaster. He checked the back door twice, the way his mother used to, which he'd sworn he'd never do.

"Do you want the blue jacket?" Maya called.

"Is it going to rain?"

"It says forty percent."

"That's not a real number," he said, but he brought the jacket anyway, and she folded it into the suitcase because he never folded anything, he just pressed it down until it stayed.

They loaded the car at ten after eight. James took the bags; Maya took the cooler with the sandwiches she'd made at six, before coffee, because she liked doing something useful while the house was still quiet. The morning was gray and cool and smelled like someone's wet lawn.

"Thermostat," she said.

"Sixty-two."

"Coffee maker."

"Off. I checked it, then I checked it again, and then I looked at it from the doorway."

She laughed. He locked the front door and pulled the handle to be sure, and she watched him do it, and did not say anything about it, which after eleven years felt like a kind of love.

In the car, she put her feet on the dash, then took them down. James backed out slowly. At the stop sign at the end of their street he turned to her and said, "Left or right?"

"Left," she said. "You know it's left."

He went left.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a small, patient animal.

Marisol folded two sweaters into it, then unfolded one and held it up. "It's supposed to be sixty in Asheville."

"Sixty during the day," Dev said from the closet. He came out with his good boots in one hand and a hanger in the other. "It drops fast in the mountains. Take the wool one."

"That's what I'm saying." She put the wool one in.

He'd been up since six, which was unusual for a Friday, and had already done the things he liked doing before trips: checked the tire pressure, printed the reservation even though it was on his phone, made a thermos of coffee that was now sweating on the dresser. Marisol had made the list. They divided labor along old, comfortable lines.

"Did you email the neighbor about the mail?"

"Text. Yesterday." She zipped the toiletry bag. "You have to unplug the space heater in the office."

"Already did."

"You always say that and then you didn't."

He went and checked. He had done it. He came back and said nothing, which she took as a small victory anyway.

By nine-forty the bag was in the trunk beside a canvas tote of granola bars, a paperback she wouldn't read, and Dev's rain shell. Marisol walked the first floor once, touching the stove knobs, the back door, the thermostat, which she set to sixty-two. Dev stood in the driveway with the keys, patting his pockets in the sequence he always did: wallet, phone, glasses.

"Bathroom before we go," she said, coming out. "It's four hours."

"I'm fine."

"You'll say that until Gastonia."

He went inside. She locked the front door behind them both when he returned, tried the handle twice, and got in the passenger seat. Dev backed down the drive, paused at the end of it, and looked over.

"Ready?"

"Go," she said.


Maya found the suitcase where it always lived, on the shelf above the winter coats, and hauled it down with a grunt that brought Daniel in from the kitchen.

"You could have asked," he said.

"You were making coffee. Coffee is more important."

They packed on the bed, which was a mistake they made every time. Daniel folded his shirts into neat rectangles. Maya rolled hers into what she insisted were "efficient cylinders" and shoved them into the corners. Two pairs of shoes each, though they were only going for two nights, and neither of them could explain why.

"Did you cancel the mail?"

"It's two days, Danny."

"Fine." He zipped his side. "Did you text your mother?"

She had not texted her mother. She texted her mother.

The house had to be settled before they could leave — this was the part that always took longer than the packing. Maya emptied the coffee grounds and wiped the counter. Daniel took out the trash and then came back for the recycling, which he'd forgotten, and then stood in the hallway trying to remember what else. Thermostat. He set it to sixty-two. Maya watered the fern by the window and told it, quietly, to hold on.

At the door they did the ritual. Wallet. Phone. Charger. Keys. Daniel patted his pockets three times in sequence and Maya waited without comment, because eighteen years had taught her that commenting only added a fourth pat.

The morning was gray and cool, the kind that promised to burn off by ten. Daniel wedged the suitcase into the trunk beside the cooler. Maya took the driver's seat without discussion; she always drove the first leg.

"Ready?"

"Locked it," he said, and then, "Wait." He went back and checked the door, twice, and jogged back to the car.

She was laughing at him when he got in. He didn't mind.


Maya found the suitcase under the bed, where it had stayed since their last trip, and dragged it into the light. Dust clung to the wheels. She wiped them with a paper towel while Daniel stood at the closet, holding up two shirts, asking which one said "nice dinner but not trying too hard."

"The blue one," she said, without looking.

"You didn't look."

"The blue one is always the answer."

He folded it anyway, then unfolded it and rolled it, because he had read somewhere that rolling saved space. Maya packed the way she did everything, in tidy stacks, socks tucked into shoes. She left a gap in the corner for the wine they'd promised to bring back for his sister.

By seven-thirty they were down to the small things. Daniel unplugged the toaster and checked the stove twice. Maya wrote a note for the neighbor about the mail and set the key on the counter where Ruth would find it. The cat, Otis, watched from the top of the bookshelf with the flat disapproval of an animal who understood luggage.

"Litter box," Maya said.

"Done. Extra bowl too."

They carried the bag out together, Daniel taking the stairs backward, Maya steadying it from below, both of them laughing when it thumped against the railing. The morning was already warm, the street quiet except for a sprinkler two houses down.

Daniel loaded the trunk. Maya set two coffees in the cupholders and a paper bag of muffins on the console, then went back inside for the phone charger she'd forgotten, and then again for her sunglasses. Daniel waited with the engine running, drumming the wheel, not annoyed.

"Okay," she said, buckling in. "Okay. Now?"

"Now."

He backed out of the driveway. At the stop sign, Maya reached over and put her hand on his knee, and they turned east toward the highway.


Marguerite found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to donating. It smelled faintly of the last trip, three years ago, before her mother got sick.

"You're bringing that thing?" Desmond called from the bedroom. "It's two days."

"It's two days and a wedding-adjacent dinner with your cousin."

"Vaughn's not getting married. He's just having a birthday."

"Then why did he say 'semiformal'?"

Desmond appeared in the doorway holding two shirts, one blue, one a slightly different blue. She pointed at the left one without looking up. He nodded and went back.

By ten they had a system going, badly. Marguerite packed while Desmond made a list of things to unplug, then unplugged them, then found her phone charger still in the wall and had to argue about whether that counted as her fault. The neighbor's kid was hired to bring in the mail. The thermostat went to fifty-eight. Desmond stood in the kitchen with the fridge open for a long moment, moving a container of leftover rice to the front where they'd see it Sunday night and remember to throw it out.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Bathroom," she said, and went.

The car was cold. Desmond backed out of the driveway and stopped halfway, and neither of them said anything, and then Marguerite said, "Door."

"I locked it."

"Did you?"

He put it in park, walked up the driveway, jiggled the knob, came back. "Locked."

"Thank you."

They got onto the highway at 10:40, later than planned. The sun was doing something decent through the windshield. Marguerite put her hand on his knee and left it there, and Desmond changed lanes to pass a truck, and neither of them turned on the radio for the first eleven miles.


Marguerite found the suitcase on the top shelf of the hall closet, behind a box of Christmas lights they'd meant to throw away. She hauled it down and set it on the bed, where Desmond was folding shirts with the particular slowness of a man who folded shirts perhaps twice a year.

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

"I need options."

She let him win that one and went to check the coffee maker, which she'd already checked. The kitchen was clean in the way a kitchen only gets clean before you leave it. She unplugged the toaster. She looked at the plants on the windowsill and decided they'd survive.

Desmond came down carrying both bags and set them by the door. "Did you cancel the mail?"

"It's a Friday and a Saturday, Des."

"Right." He rubbed the back of his neck. "The Hendersons have the key?"

"Nobody has the key. Nothing's going to happen."

He nodded, unconvinced but agreeable, and went out to start the car. It was gray-blue and eleven years old and made a sound on cold mornings that they had both agreed to ignore. Marguerite did a last circuit of the house — bathroom light, back door, thermostat down to sixty — then stood in the front hall for a second longer than necessary, the way she always did, listening to the particular quiet of a house that was about to be empty.

She locked up. Desmond had the trunk open and took her bag without asking. In the passenger seat she found a gas station coffee waiting in the cup holder, still hot, with the sleeve on it.

"You went out?"

"While you were checking the coffee maker the second time."

She didn't answer that. She put her hand on his knee as he backed out of the driveway, and the house got smaller behind them, and then it was gone.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the hall closet, wedged behind a snow shovel they hadn't used since March. She dragged it out and dropped it on the bed, where Danny was folding shirts with the strange precision he applied only to packing.

"Two nights," he said. "You don't need four sweaters."

"It's the mountains. It gets cold at night." She put three in anyway, then took one back out when he raised an eyebrow.

The house had a checklist energy to it. Danny went around unplugging things—the toaster, the space heater, the lamp with the frayed cord they kept meaning to replace. Marisol texted their neighbor Reggie about the mail and left a spare key under the ceramic frog. She watered the fern by the window, which was probably a lost cause, and set the thermostat to sixty.

At ten past nine they were carrying bags to the car. Danny rearranged the trunk twice. Marisol brought coffee in travel mugs and a paper bag of the sesame bagels from the place on Fourth, still warm.

"Did you lock the back door?" she asked, halfway down the driveway.

He put the car in park. She went and checked. It was locked. She locked it again anyway.

The highway was easy for the first forty minutes, then thickened near the interchange. Danny drove. Marisol handled the music, skipping past anything too mellow, and read him the reviews of the diner they'd stop at for lunch—three and a half stars, but everyone agreed about the pie.

Around eleven the buildings gave out and the land opened up, brown and gold and then green as they climbed. Marisol rolled her window down two inches and let the cold air in. Danny didn't complain about it, which she noticed. She put her hand on his knee, and he took it, and they drove on like that for a while, not saying much.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Marisol dropped in two folded sweaters, then stood back and frowned.

"It's supposed to hit forty-five at night," she said. "Bring the flannel."

Dev appeared in the doorway with a coffee mug in each hand, one for her, one for him. "The flannel makes me look like I'm about to chop wood."

"You've never chopped wood in your life."

"That's what makes it aspirational."

He set the mugs on the dresser and went to the closet anyway, pulling the flannel from its hanger and rolling it the way his mother had taught him, tight as a newspaper. Marisol counted socks. Two pairs, plus one extra, because Dev always managed to step in something.

By nine they had the bag zipped and the thermostat set to fifty-eight. Marisol went through the kitchen unplugging things — toaster, kettle, the little radio that lived by the window — while Dev carried the cooler out to the car and wedged it behind the passenger seat. He came back in for the tote of snacks, then again for his phone charger, then a third time for her sunglasses, which she'd left on the counter next to the mail.

"Did you text your sister about the cat?" he asked.

"She's coming at six. I left the food scoop on top of the bin."

They stood in the front hall a moment, doing the last silent inventory people do. Marisol tried the door handle twice after locking it. Dev pretended not to notice, and then, when she tried it a third time, laughed and said nothing.

The car smelled like the cardboard air freshener he'd bought in September. He backed out of the driveway; she found the playlist she'd made two weeks ago, in anticipation. At the stop sign at the end of their street, he reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and she put hers on top of it, and they turned left.


Maya found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind the winter coats and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away.

"Two nights," she called. "That's four outfits, tops."

"Six," Daniel said from the bedroom. "Contingencies."

She rolled the suitcase in and found him holding two nearly identical gray sweaters, comparing them with real concentration. She took one and dropped it in the bag. He didn't argue.

They worked in the shorthand of eleven years. He handled the chargers and the toiletry kit; she pulled the trash, checked the back door twice, wrote a note for the neighbor about the mail. The thermostat went down to sixty-two. The coffee maker got unplugged, which Daniel insisted on and Maya thought was excessive, though she'd stopped saying so around year seven.

At the last minute, she went back for the good hiking socks. He was already in the driveway with the hatch open, rearranging the bag so it wouldn't slide.

"Did you get the reservation confirmation?" she asked.

"It's in my email."

"Screenshot it. The signal's bad up there."

He did. She got in and adjusted the seat forward, then back.

The gas station was three blocks away and they stopped anyway, because he liked to leave with a full tank and she liked the iced coffee they made there, too sweet, the kind she wouldn't order in front of people. She bought him a bag of pretzels he hadn't asked for. He ate them driving.

By the time they hit the highway, the town had thinned out into fields and billboards and one long stretch of nothing. Maya put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he didn't say anything about it.

"Two days," she said.

"Two days," he agreed, and moved into the left lane.


Marcus found the suitcase where it always lived, on the top shelf of the hall closet behind the winter coats. He hauled it down and set it open on the bed, and by the time Priya came out of the shower he had already packed his half — three shirts, two pairs of jeans, the good socks.

"You're going to wrinkle everything," she said, toweling her hair.

"It's two days. Nothing has time to wrinkle."

She folded her own clothes anyway, the way her mother had taught her, and slid them into the empty side. Then she went back for the things Marcus never remembered: the phone chargers, the ibuprofen, the little zippered bag of contact lens solution. She stood in the bathroom doorway holding his toothbrush up like evidence.

"That would have been bad," he admitted.

At nine they did the walk-through. Marcus turned the thermostat down to sixty-two and unplugged the coffee maker. Priya watered the fern on the windowsill and texted their neighbor Denise about the mail. They argued briefly, without heat, about whether to leave the porch light on a timer or just leave it on.

"Timer," Priya said. "It's the whole point of a timer."

Loading the car took one trip. Marcus put the suitcase in the trunk with the cooler bag — two waters, apples, the pretzels she liked. Priya locked the front door, checked it, and then checked it again while Marcus watched from behind the wheel, not saying anything, because he'd learned not to.

She got in and pulled her seatbelt across.

"Did we —"

"Stove's off. I looked twice."

"Okay." She exhaled. "Okay. Go."

He backed out of the driveway slowly, the way he always did, and turned left at the stop sign. Priya put her feet on the dash, then took them down. The house shrank in the mirror. Neither of them said much for the first ten miles, and that was fine.


The suitcase sat open on the bed for three days before Marcus finally started filling it. Diane had packed hers Tuesday night, neat rows of folded shirts and a paperback she'd been meaning to finish since March.

"You're bringing the gray sweater?" she asked from the doorway, coffee mug warming her hands. Friday morning light came through the blinds in slats.

"It's supposed to drop into the fifties up there."

"It's May."

"In the mountains." He held it up like evidence, then packed it anyway.

They moved around each other in the kitchen with the particular choreography of eighteen years. Diane emptied the coffee pot and wiped the counter. Marcus checked the back door twice, then a third time, and she pretended not to notice. He watered the fern by the sink because she'd forget to ask and then worry about it Saturday night.

"Did you tell the Hendersons about the mail?"

"Text her yesterday. She's got the spare key."

The thermostat went down to sixty-two. Diane unplugged the toaster, an old habit from her mother. Marcus carried both bags out to the driveway while she walked through the house one more time, flipping switches, checking the stove that neither of them had used since breakfast.

The car smelled faintly of the dog, though the dog was already at her sister's. Marcus adjusted the mirrors even though nobody else had driven it. Diane handed him a travel mug and a bag of almonds and buckled in.

"Two days," she said.

"Two days."

He backed out slowly. At the end of the street she said "wait" and he stopped, and she looked at him.

"The iron?"

"You haven't ironed anything since Easter."

She laughed. "Okay. Go."

He turned onto the main road, and neither of them said anything for a mile or so, which was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Maya folded two shirts, then unfolded them and folded them again, tighter, while Daniel stood in the doorway holding a bag of ice he'd already forgotten why he'd bought.

"The cooler's in the garage," she said without looking up.

"Right." He didn't move. "Do we need a cooler for two days?"

"You wanted sandwiches."

He set the ice in the sink and went to find the cooler anyway, which took eleven minutes because their garage had become the place where intentions went to be stored in cardboard boxes. When he came back she had zipped the suitcase and was standing at the thermostat, squinting.

"Sixty-two? For two days?"

"The pipes," she said.

"It's April."

"Sixty-five, then." She pressed the arrow twice and they both watched the little screen agree with her.

They did the walkthrough the way they always did, though neither of them had ever suggested it out loud. Coffee maker unplugged. Back door locked, then rattled, then locked again. Daniel checked the stove twice; Maya checked it a third time after him, and he let her, because he'd stopped minding that particular thing around year six.

Their neighbor's dog barked as they loaded the car. Maya put the cooler behind the passenger seat where she could reach it, and Daniel moved it to the trunk, and she moved it back, and he said nothing.

"Phone charger," she said, halfway down the driveway.

He put the car in park. She was already out, jogging up the walk, keys jangling. Through the windshield he watched the front door open and swallow her, then give her back sixty seconds later, charger held up like a trophy.

She dropped into the seat, breathing a little hard, and buckled in.

"Okay," she said.

He backed out. Neither of them turned on the radio for the first several miles, and that was fine.


The suitcase lay open on the bed for three days before either of them put anything in it. Marisol kept adding items in passing—a paperback, sunscreen, the good sandals—while Dev walked past it twice a day pretending not to notice the growing pile.

Friday morning, he finally cracked. "Are we bringing the entire linen closet?"

"Two towels," she said from the bathroom. "The place said they don't provide beach towels."

"It's October."

"It's a lake. People sit by lakes in October."

He conceded the towels. In exchange, she agreed to leave behind the second pair of hiking boots, which she'd packed on the theory that one pair might get wet.

They divided the house between them the way they'd learned to over eleven years. Dev handled the thermostat, the coffee maker, the back door that only locked if you lifted the handle. Marisol texted their neighbor Ruth about the mail, watered the fern that would die anyway, and stood in the kitchen doing the mental inventory that always produced one forgotten thing at mile forty.

At nine-fifteen they carried everything to the driveway. Dev loaded the trunk with the particular smugness of a man who understood spatial relationships. Marisol let him have it.

"Phone charger," she said.

He patted his jacket. "Got it."

"The car one."

He went back inside.

When he returned she was already in the passenger seat with her feet on the dash, scrolling for a playlist. He backed out slowly, checking the house once in the rearview—porch light off, garage closed, the sprinkler timer he'd set at dawn.

"Two whole days," she said.

"Two whole days."

At the stop sign he reached over without looking and she took his hand, and they turned north toward the highway, the radio finding a station just as the neighborhood fell behind them.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Dana stood over it, holding two sweaters, unable to decide.

"It's Vermont in October," Miguel called from the bathroom. "Take both."

"Then I'll have to check a bag."

"We're driving."

She laughed at herself and dropped both sweaters in. Down the hall, the coffee maker gurgled through its last cycle. Miguel came out with his toiletry kit, already dressed, hair still damp at the neck. He'd been ready for twenty minutes, which he mentioned exactly zero times, which Dana appreciated more than she said.

They moved through the house in the choreography of eleven years. He unplugged the toaster and the space heater in the office. She wrote a note for Delia next door about the mail and the porch light, then taped it to the storm door where Delia would actually see it. He carried the bag out to the driveway and wedged it behind the passenger seat because the trunk was full of the folding chairs they kept meaning to take out.

"Did you turn the water heater down?"

"I did," he said. "Did you cancel the grocery delivery?"

She had not. She stood in the kitchen with her thumbs flying while the coffee cooled, then poured it into two travel mugs, the blue one for him because he insisted the blue one kept things hotter.

At the door, they both stopped. Dana looked back down the hallway at the quiet rooms, the dish towel folded over the oven handle.

"Anything?" Miguel asked.

"No. I don't think so."

He locked the deadbolt and jiggled the knob twice, the way his father had.

In the car, she found the playlist she'd been building for three weeks and pretended it was spontaneous. He backed out slowly, one hand on her headrest, and they turned north into a morning still holding its fog.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a small argument waiting to happen. Dana folded a sweater into a tight rectangle and set it in the corner. Behind her, Marcus dropped in a pair of hiking boots, which promptly unfolded the sweater.

"Two days," she said. "You packed boots for two days."

"There's a trail behind the inn. It said so on the website."

"You read the website?"

"I read one sentence of the website." He kissed the top of her head on his way to the closet, which she decided to accept as an apology.

They had booked the place in February, when winter still felt permanent and a cabin two hours north had seemed like an idea from someone else's life. Now it was late September and the whole thing had crept up on them, the way things did in a house with a broken dishwasher and a nine-to-five each.

Dana went down to the kitchen to deal with the refrigerator. She poured out half a carton of milk, bagged the salad greens for the neighbor, and left a sticky note on the counter that read FEED THE CAT, TWICE, PLEASE — as if Ruthie next door hadn't done it four times before. Upstairs, Marcus was unplugging things that didn't need unplugging.

"Chargers," he called down.

"In the front pocket."

"Sunglasses."

"On your head."

He came down with the suitcase bumping each stair. In the driveway the air had that dry, bright edge autumn gets in the afternoon. He wedged the bag into the trunk beside a cooler and a canvas tote of paperbacks neither of them would open. Dana checked the front door twice, then a third time, and Marcus waited without comment because after eleven years he knew better.

She got in. He backed out slowly, watching for the neighbor's kid on his scooter, and turned toward the highway.

"Coffee first," she said.

"Obviously," he said, and put on the radio.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed, and Maren kept walking past it with things she wasn't sure she needed. A second cardigan. The paperback she'd been not-reading since March.

"You're bringing the hiking boots?" Desmond called from the bathroom, where he was counting out his blood pressure pills into a plastic organizer.

"There's a trail behind the inn. It said so on the website."

"It said there was a trail. It didn't say we'd walk it."

She put the boots in anyway, then took them out, then put them back. Two nights in Galena. They'd been talking about it since their anniversary in April, and now it was almost October and the leaves were doing the thing that made people drive four hours to look at trees.

Desmond came out with his toothbrush still in his mouth and stood there assessing the suitcase like a building inspector. He mumbled something.

"What?"

He spat into a tissue. "I said, we're only going to be gone forty-eight hours."

"Fine, then you pack."

He did, mostly. She held the dog while he carried the bag down. Then they did the ritual: stove off, back door locked, thermostat down to sixty-two, the light in the front room on a timer so the house would look occupied. Maren texted their neighbor Priya about the dog. Desmond checked the stove again.

In the car he handed her the aux cord without being asked, which was its own kind of apology for the boots comment. She put on the seventies playlist he pretended not to like.

They stopped at the gas station on Wolf Road. He filled the tank; she came out with two coffees and a bag of the terrible cinnamon almonds they only ever ate on road trips.

"Did you lock the back door?" he said.

"Yes."

"Okay." He pulled out onto the road. "Okay. Good."


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Marisol dropped in two folded sweaters, then removed one, then put it back.

"It's Vermont in October," Danny said from the closet. "Bring the sweater."

"I brought the sweater. I brought three sweaters." She sat down on the edge of the mattress and looked at the pile of things she'd assembled on the dresser: phone charger, reading glasses, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since August.

Danny came out holding two flannel shirts on hangers, considering them the way other men consider used cars. He was already wearing his good boots, which meant he'd been ready for twenty minutes and was being polite about it.

"The one with the elbow patches," she said.

"That's what I thought."

Downstairs, they moved through the small rituals. Danny checked the back door twice and the stove once. Marisol texted their neighbor Julie about the mail, then filled the cat's bowl higher than necessary, murmuring apologies to an animal who was asleep and did not care. She set the thermostat to fifty-eight and stood a moment in the dim kitchen, feeling the particular quiet of a house about to be left.

The car was cold. Danny loaded the bags in the trunk while Marisol scraped a light frost from the windshield with an old library card. They got in, and he turned the key, and the radio came on mid-sentence, some man discussing a bridge closure.

"Coffee first," she said. "The place on Route 9, not the gas station."

"Obviously." He backed out of the driveway slowly, the way he always did, and paused at the end of it to look back at the house — the porch light they'd left on, the maple losing its leaves in the yard.

Marisol put her hand on his knee. He pulled onto the road, and they went.


Marcus found the suitcase in the hall closet, wedged behind a box of Christmas ornaments they'd meant to sort through last January. He set it on the bed and unzipped it while Dana stood at the dresser, holding two sweaters and frowning at both.

"It's supposed to be sixty," he said.

"Sixty in the afternoon. Forty at night." She folded the gray one and set the blue one back in the drawer, then took it out again and packed both.

They moved around each other in the small bedroom with the easy choreography of nine years. He packed his own things in four minutes—jeans, two shirts, the good socks—and then spent twenty locating his phone charger, which turned out to be in the car.

Dana wrote a note for Kelsey next door about the cat: *Two scoops morning and night, and she'll pretend she hasn't eaten. Ignore her.* She taped it to the bag of food on the counter and left a spare key in the flowerpot, the way they always did.

"Did you turn off the coffee maker?"

"You watched me do it."

"I know. I just like hearing it."

Marcus carried the bag out to the driveway. The car needed gas and a wash, but only one of those was happening today. Dana came out with two travel mugs and her tote bag and the folder of directions she'd printed even though both their phones worked fine.

"Bathroom?" he asked.

"Went."

"Stove?"

"Off. Front door?"

He jogged back up the walk, tried the knob, and came back. "Locked."

She was already in the passenger seat, seat belt on, mug in the cup holder. He backed down the driveway slowly, checking the mirror out of habit, and turned onto the street. Neither of them said anything for the first mile. It was a good silence.


Marguerite found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind the winter coats and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting up. She hauled it out and set it on the bed, unzipping it while Desmond stood at the dresser, holding two shirts.

"The blue one," she said, without looking up.

"You didn't even see them."

"I know which two shirts you're holding. You hold the same two shirts every time."

He put the striped one back. She heard the drawer close and smiled at the mattress.

They packed together, badly, the way they always did — she folded, he rolled, and neither of them said anything about it. He remembered the phone chargers. She remembered his allergy pills, which he had already forgotten, and set them on top of his socks where he'd see them.

Downstairs, the coffee maker gurgled through its last cup. Desmond took out the trash and checked the back door twice. Marguerite watered the fern by the window, then thought better of it and moved the whole pot into the sink, in case they were gone longer than two days, which they wouldn't be, but still.

"Thermostat," he said from the hallway.

"Sixty-two."

"Sixty-four."

"Sixty-two, Desmond, it's forty degrees out."

He adjusted it to sixty-three and she let him have it.

The car was cold. He backed down the driveway while she scrolled to find the exit number, though she'd driven this route a hundred times and knew it by heart. Halfway to the interstate she reached over and turned the radio down, and he glanced at her, and she said, "Did you lock the front door?"

He pulled into a gas station, and she waited, watching a man fill a red plastic can, until Desmond came back and said, "Locked. I checked it twice before, too."

"I know," she said. "Drive."


The suitcase had been open on the bed since Thursday, collecting the small evidence of a trip: Dana's paperback, the good sunscreen, a phone charger nobody could agree belonged to either of them.

"Did you cancel the paper?" Marcus asked, standing in the doorway with two coffee mugs.

"We don't get a paper."

"Right." He handed her a mug anyway. "I keep thinking there's something."

They had two days, which was not much, but it was more than they'd managed since March. A cabin outside Asheville, four hours if the Saturday traffic behaved. Dana had booked it in a fit of optimism during a slow afternoon at work, and Marcus had said yes before he checked the calendar, which he considered a personal triumph.

She folded a sweatshirt she wouldn't wear. He carried the cooler down and came back for the bag of snacks, then went back a third time for the bag of snacks he'd left on the counter while carrying the first bag of snacks.

"Thermostat," Dana said.

"Sixty-two. Already did it."

"Lights on the timer?"

"That was you."

"It was me," she agreed. She stood in the middle of the living room a moment, doing the mental walkthrough — stove off, back door locked, plants watered enough to survive their absence. The house had that suspended feeling of a place about to be empty.

Marcus locked the front door and jiggled the handle twice, the way his father used to. Dana was already in the passenger seat, adjusting the vents.

"Music or podcast?" he asked, backing out.

"Music first. Podcast when we're tired of each other."

"Generous."

At the corner he paused, signaled, and pulled onto the road. Behind them the house sat quiet with its timer lights and its lowered heat. Dana put her feet on the dash, which he pretended to mind, and the highway opened up ahead of them, gray and ordinary and entirely theirs for two days.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed.

"Two days," Marcus said, holding up a fourth shirt. "You know that, right? Two."

Elena didn't look up from the drawer she was excavating. "You wore three shirts on Saturday alone last time. There was the coffee incident."

"That was one time." But he folded the shirt anyway and set it in.

Outside, the November light came thin and gray through the bedroom window. Downstairs, the coffee maker sputtered its last. Elena had been up since six, which Marcus knew because he'd felt her leave, that particular shift of the mattress he'd learned in fourteen years the way you learn the sound of your own house settling.

"Did you cancel the paper?"

"I put a hold on it Thursday."

"And Kathy's coming for Biscuit?"

"Tonight at seven, tomorrow at seven." Elena zipped the toiletry bag. "You asked me that in the car dealership parking lot on Tuesday."

"I like hearing it."

By nine-forty they were carrying things down—the suitcase, the tote of snacks Elena had assembled with the seriousness of a general provisioning troops, the phone chargers, the pillow Marcus refused to travel without. Biscuit followed them from room to room, tail low, reading the signs.

Marcus loaded the trunk while Elena did the walk-through: stove knobs, back door, the space heater in the office she'd unplugged twice already. She stood a moment in the front hall, listening to the house be quiet.

"Ready?" he called.

She locked the door and came down the steps. He'd already programmed the GPS, already put her water bottle in the cup holder, already found the station she liked and left it there.

She got in. He pulled out of the driveway slowly, the way he always did, and they turned left at the stop sign toward the highway, the house shrinking behind them, small and safe and waiting.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Diane folded two sweaters into it, then unfolded one and folded it again, tighter, the way her mother had taught her.

"It's Vermont in October," Paul said from the doorway, holding two travel mugs. "Not Antarctica."

"You'll want the fleece at night." She took the mug he offered, sipped, made a face. "Too much sugar."

"That's mine." They traded, both laughing at the small stupidity of it.

He checked the thermostat, then checked it again. She unplugged the toaster and the coffee maker, wound the cord around the base, and set a bowl of water down for the cat, who would be visited twice by their neighbor Ruth. On the counter Diane left a note that said BROOKLYN'S FOOD IS IN THE PANTRY, THANK YOU RUTH, and beneath it, because Paul insisted, a twenty-dollar bill Ruth would refuse and leave behind.

They carried the bag out together, Paul hoisting it into the trunk beside the cooler with the sandwiches Diane had made at six that morning, crusts on, mustard for him, mayonnaise for her. He backed out of the driveway. She reached over and turned the radio down.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"Yes."

"Did you actually lock it, or—"

He put the car in park at the end of the street. Walked back. Came out ninety seconds later holding up his hands in surrender.

"Unlocked?"

"Locked. But I appreciated the exercise."

She was still smiling when they merged onto the interstate. The maples along the shoulder had begun to turn, a rust color that came on slowly and then all at once. Paul rested his hand on the console. Diane put hers over it, and neither of them said anything for eleven miles, which was, she thought, the whole point of going.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed.

"Do I need the good shoes?" Marcus asked, holding up a pair of brown leather oxfords he'd worn exactly twice since their nephew's wedding.

Diane looked up from folding a cardigan. "It's a cabin. In Vermont. In October."

"So no."

"So no." She smiled, and he set the shoes back in the closet with the exaggerated care of a man conceding a point he'd never seriously intended to win.

They had been packing for forty minutes, which was thirty-five minutes longer than Marcus thought necessary and twenty minutes less than Diane felt was safe. She'd printed the reservation confirmation and put it in the outer pocket of her purse. He'd checked the tire pressure that morning and said nothing about it, because she would have asked whether he'd remembered, and he liked being able to say yes.

By eight-fifteen the bags were by the door. Diane went through the house the way she always did before leaving—thermostat down to sixty-two, coffee maker unplugged, back door latch jiggled twice. Marcus carried the cooler out to the car, came back for the duffel, and stood in the kitchen watching her check the stove knobs.

"They're off," he said.

"I know they're off. I'm confirming they're off."

He put the spare key in his jacket pocket. She turned off the last lamp.

Outside, the air had that first real bite of fall. Marcus backed out of the driveway while Diane scrolled through the playlist she'd made three days ago and hadn't mentioned. At the stop sign at the end of their street, she said, "Wait—did you lock it?"

He held up the key fob and pressed it, though the house was a hundred feet behind them and the fob had nothing to do with the front door. She laughed. He turned left toward the highway.


Marcus found the suitcase on the closet shelf, right where Elena said it would be, behind the box of winter hats. He carried it down to the bedroom and set it open on the bed like an invitation.

"Two nights," Elena called from the bathroom, over the sound of running water. "Not two weeks. Don't let me overpack."

"You said that last time."

"And you let me bring three pairs of shoes."

He laughed and started folding shirts. Outside, October light came in low and orange through the blinds. The house had that particular Friday afternoon quiet, the neighbors' dogs not yet barking, the school bus already come and gone.

Elena emerged with her hair up, holding a zippered bag of toiletries. She surveyed the suitcase, removed one of the shirts Marcus had folded, and put it back a moment later.

"Fine," she said. "It's a good shirt."

They moved through the checklist without discussing it, having done this enough times. Marcus emptied the coffee grounds and took the trash to the curb. Elena watered the plants on the windowsill, then wrote a note for the neighbor about the mail. She set the thermostat down to sixty-two. He checked the back door twice.

"Charger?" she asked.

"In the front pocket."

"Both chargers?"

He went back for hers.

By four-thirty the car was loaded, the suitcase in the trunk beside a tote bag of snacks Elena had assembled: almonds, two apples, a bag of pretzels she'd already opened.

Marcus locked the front door and tested the knob. Elena was already in the passenger seat, adjusting the vents. He got in, backed down the driveway, and paused at the end of it, looking at the house.

"You forgot something," she said.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to see if you'd panic."

He shook his head and pulled onto the road, and she found a station they could both agree on before they reached the highway.


The suitcase lay open on the bed for three days before either of them put anything in it. Marisol kept walking past it, adding items in her head, and Dev kept moving it to the floor when he wanted to nap.

Friday morning they finally packed in earnest. Marisol rolled her clothes the way a video had taught her, four shirts and two pairs of jeans compressed into a corner. Dev folded his flat and set them on top, which undid some of her work, though she didn't say so. He asked whether he needed a jacket for two days in October. She said yes. He packed a hoodie instead and she let it go.

The cabin was three hours north, booked in August when the rate was low and the weekend felt hypothetical. Now it was real, and there were logistics. Marisol texted their neighbor about the mail. Dev emptied the fridge of anything that would turn, standing at the sink eating the last of a container of rice while she read him the checklist: phone chargers, the good coffee, the hiking boots he'd left in the garage since spring.

He found the boots. They were dusty and one had a spider in it, which he carried outside on a piece of junk mail while Marisol watched from the doorway and did not offer to help.

By ten they were loading the car. Dev drove; Marisol navigated, though the route was one highway and a left turn. She'd made a playlist. He'd made one too, and neither mentioned it until they were past the county line and he asked what she wanted to hear.

They stopped once for gas and terrible coffee. Marisol bought a bag of pretzels and ate most of them before the second hour. The trees got better the farther north they went. Neither of them said much for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and neither of them moved for a full minute.

"I'll make coffee," Dana finally said, swinging her legs off the bed. Her husband, Rob, groaned into his pillow, then followed her down the hall in a T-shirt and gym shorts.

They'd been planning the trip to Asheville for three weeks—two nights at a bed and breakfast, a hike if the weather held, dinner at a place Dana's coworker had recommended twice. Nothing extravagant. It was their anniversary weekend, the eleventh, and they'd skipped the tenth entirely because of Rob's mother's surgery.

Dana packed while the coffee brewed. She was efficient about it: two pairs of jeans, the green sweater, hiking socks, the toiletry bag she never fully unpacked between trips. Rob was worse. He stood in front of the closet holding two nearly identical flannel shirts.

"Take both," she said, passing behind him.

"That's what I was thinking."

He handled the practical things instead. He filled the dog's automatic feeder and texted their neighbor Kelly the reminder about letting Bosco out at noon. He checked that the back door was locked, then checked it again. He unplugged the space heater in the office, the toaster, the coffee maker once the pot was full.

By seven they were loading the car. Rob took the bags; Dana carried the cooler with sandwiches and two bottles of water. The morning was gray and cold enough that she could see her breath.

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

"It's in my purse. Did you grab the other one?"

He went back inside for it.

When he returned, she was already in the passenger seat with the map pulled up. He backed down the driveway, paused at the end of it, and looked at the house.

"We're good," Dana said.

"We're good," he agreed, and turned onto the road.


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

Marisol packed first, on Thursday night, folding two shirts and a pair of jeans into one half while the television murmured in the other room. She added her book, then took it out, then put it back. Dev came in with a laundry basket and found her sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding a sweater she hadn't decided about.

"It's supposed to be sixty-one both days," he said.

"That's what I keep telling myself."

He set the basket down and packed the other half of the suitcase — three shirts, because he never trusted himself with two, and the good socks he'd been saving without knowing what for. Marisol watched him roll everything instead of folding, the way his mother had taught him, and said nothing about it, which was its own kind of affection.

Friday morning they woke at six without an alarm. Dev made coffee in the travel mugs while Marisol watered the plants, tipping the little green can over the pothos and the stubborn fern that had been dying politely for a year. She left a note for the neighbor about the mail and stuck it to the door with a magnet shaped like Ohio.

"Do we have the confirmation?" she asked.

"On my phone. And printed."

"Of course it's printed."

They loaded the car in two trips. Dev checked the back door twice. Marisol sat in the passenger seat with the mugs balanced between her knees, waiting, and when he finally got in she handed him his without looking over.

The street was gray and wet from overnight rain. At the stop sign at the end of their block he paused longer than necessary, and she reached across and put her hand flat on his knee.

"Okay," she said.

He signaled left, and they went.


Marisol found the suitcase in the back of the hall closet, under a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. She hauled it into the bedroom and unzipped it on the bed, where a faint smell of last summer's sunscreen escaped.

"Two days," Dev said from the doorway, holding two coffee mugs. "You don't need six shirts."

"Four." She took the mug he offered. "One for tonight, one for tomorrow, and two in case something happens."

"What's going to happen?"

"Spaghetti."

He laughed and set his mug on the dresser, then went to check the weather on his phone. Rain Saturday afternoon, clearing by evening. He pulled a rain jacket from its hanger, folded it badly, and dropped it into the suitcase beside her neat stacks.

While she packed, he made his rounds. He turned the thermostat down to sixty-two, unplugged the toaster, and watered the fern by the kitchen window that Marisol swore was dying and he swore was fine. He wrote a note for their neighbor Trina, who had agreed to feed the cat: *One scoop morning, one at night. She'll tell you she hasn't eaten. She has.*

Marisol did a last pass through the bathroom, sweeping toothbrush, contact solution, and the small bag of medications into a pouch. She found Dev's razor on the edge of the sink and added it without comment.

At nine-fifteen they carried everything to the car. Dev backed out of the driveway, then stopped halfway down the street.

"Did you lock the back door?"

Marisol thought about it. "I don't know."

He put the car in park. She was already unbuckling. "I'll go. You'll take twenty minutes."

She jogged up the walk, found the door locked, jiggled the handle twice anyway, and came back grinning. "It was locked."

"I know it was locked."

"You asked."

He pulled onto the main road, and she found a station they could both stand.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Nadia dropped in two sweaters, then removed one, then put it back. Behind her, Owen stood in the doorway holding the coffee grinder, still in his pajama pants at nine forty in the morning.

"We said we'd leave by ten," he said.

"We said we'd *try* to leave by ten. Which is different."

He set the grinder down and went to check the thermostat, nudging it to fifty-eight, the number they'd agreed on years ago after a long argument neither of them could remember the shape of anymore. Then the fridge—he pulled out the half-and-half, sniffed it, and poured it down the drain. In the living room he watered the fern that Nadia had rescued from her mother's house, giving it slightly more than it needed, because two days felt longer to a plant than it did to a person.

Nadia zipped the bag and hauled it down the hall, thumping it against the banister on the way. "Did you print the reservation?"

"It's on my phone."

"Print it."

He printed it. He also, without being asked, filled two travel mugs and set them by the door, and located her sunglasses in the pocket of a coat she hadn't worn since March.

At 10:22 they stood in the driveway while the garage door rattled shut. Owen jiggled the front door handle twice. Nadia jiggled it a third time, and he didn't say anything about it.

In the car, she plugged in the address. He backed out slowly, one hand on her headrest, turning to look through the rear window the way his father had taught him.

"Left at the stop sign," she said.

"I know."

"I'm just saying it out loud."

They rolled past the neighbor's recycling bin and turned left, and the house got smaller behind them, and neither of them looked back at it.


Marguerite found the suitcase in the hall closet, behind a stack of extra pillows nobody had used since her sister visited in 2019. She hauled it out and set it on the bed, unzipping it while Desmond stood in the doorway with a coffee mug, watching.

"Two days," he said. "That's a small bag."

"That's a reasonable bag." She was already folding: two shirts, one sweater, socks she'd sworn she'd match later. "You've got twenty minutes before I close it."

He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a toiletry kit, then went again for the charger he'd left plugged in beside the sink, then again because he'd forgotten his razor. Marguerite didn't say anything. She'd watched this ritual for eleven years and had made peace with it, mostly.

Downstairs, they moved through the house shutting things off. Desmond checked the coffee maker twice. Marguerite emptied the crisper drawer of a wilting head of romaine and half a bag of grapes, dropping both into the trash, then tied the bag and carried it out to the bin. Desmond adjusted the thermostat down to sixty-two, texted their neighbor about the mail, and stood a moment in the front hall doing a silent inventory: keys, wallet, phone, the printed confirmation Marguerite insisted on despite the app.

She locked the deadbolt while he wrestled the suitcase into the trunk beside a canvas bag of snacks — pretzels, two bananas, a thermos.

In the car she plugged in her phone and pulled up the directions. Three hours and twelve minutes, no traffic yet.

"Did you turn off the bathroom light?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Did you actually, or—"

"Desmond."

He backed out of the driveway. At the stop sign at the end of their street, he glanced over. She was already unwrapping a granola bar and handing him half.