The Twenty-Third

Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He stood in the kitchen for a moment with his keys still in his hand, listening to the refrigerator hum, and then he started pulling things out of the grocery bags.

Diane came in at six-forty, shaking rain off her coat. "You beat me."

"Rothstein canceled." He was chopping shallots badly, the way he always did, in uneven chunks. "I got the sole."

"You got the sole." She hung her coat on the hook by the door and came over to look. "You hate deboning fish."

"I do hate deboning fish."

She kissed the side of his neck and took the knife out of his hand, and he let her, and went to find the wine. It was the twenty-third of October. Nineteen years since the night they'd sat in his car outside her apartment in Providence for two hours because neither of them wanted to be the one to end the conversation. They'd never been able to agree on which anniversary counted more, that one or the wedding, so they'd settled it years ago by celebrating both, quietly, at home.

"Sarah called," Diane said. "She wants to know if we're doing anything."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said we were staying in." Diane slid the shallots into the pan. "She sounded disappointed for us."

"Twenty-two-year-olds," Marcus said.

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, with the good glasses because Diane insisted. Afterward he washed and she dried, and they argued mildly about whether the car needed new tires before winter. At nine-thirty they took the last of the wine into the living room and put on a record he'd bought her in 2009.

"Two hours in that car," she said.

"You could have gotten out."

"So could you," Diane said, and leaned against him, and neither of them said anything for a while.


Marisol found the box of tea lights in the hall closet, behind the extension cords and the box of Christmas ornaments they never fully unpacked.

"Twenty of them," she called. "Do we need twenty?"

Daniel was in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, working on the risotto. He'd been stirring for eleven minutes and had made a small production of announcing each one. "We need exactly as many as it takes to make the dining room look like a bistro."

"It's going to look like a séance."

"Then we'll ask the spirits how we made it fifteen years."

She laughed and started setting them out along the windowsill, the bookshelf, the center of the table. Outside, the November dark had come down early, and the neighbor's motion light kept flicking on and off as a cat crossed the driveway.

They'd agreed: no restaurant, no reservation they'd have to rush to, no valet. Just the apartment, the good plates from his grandmother, and the bottle of Barolo they'd bought in Sonoma four years ago and kept meaning to open.

Marisol found the corkscrew and opened it while Daniel added the last ladle of stock. She poured two glasses, handed him one, and stood beside him at the stove.

"It smells right," she said.

"It's close." He tasted it, added salt, tasted again. "Okay. It's right."

They ate slowly. He told her about a client who'd tried to pay in cryptocurrency; she told him about her sister's latest renovation crisis. Neither of them checked a phone. At some point the tea lights on the windowsill started guttering, and Marisol got up to pinch them out.

"Fifteen," Daniel said, watching her.

"Fifteen." She sat back down and refilled his glass. "Next year, sixteen candles."

"That's a movie."

"Then we'll be very stylish," she said, and touched her glass to his.


Marguerite found the recipe card in the back of the drawer, still stained with the olive oil she'd spilled twenty-five years ago. The handwriting was her mother's, looping and confident, though the woman herself had been gone since 2019.

"You're really making it?" David asked from the doorway. He'd come home early, still in his work boots, tracking a little of the driveway gravel across the kitchen tile she'd mopped that morning. She decided not to mention it.

"It seemed right." She held up the card. "First meal I ever cooked for you."

"You burned it."

"I did not burn it. It was caramelized."

He laughed and took off his jacket, hung it on the chair instead of the hook, and started pulling things from the refrigerator without being asked—the fennel, the lemons, the block of parmesan she'd bought specially. They moved around each other in the small kitchen the way they had for decades, a kind of choreography neither of them had ever consciously learned.

David opened the wine at six. Not the expensive bottle they'd been saving, which had probably turned to vinegar by now, but a decent red from the grocery store. He poured two glasses and set one beside her cutting board.

"Twenty-five," he said.

"You keep saying it like you can't believe it."

"I can't. Some days it feels like six months. Other days—" He gestured vaguely at his own knees, which had been complaining since October.

They ate at the kitchen table rather than the dining room, which felt too formal, too much like company. Afterward Marguerite put on the record he'd given her their second Christmas, and they didn't dance, exactly, but they stood together near the window while the song played, and David rested his chin on the top of her head, and neither of them said anything at all.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into the steady drum that meant it would last all night. Dana stood at the kitchen window watching water sheet down the glass, a bag of shallots in one hand.

"We could still drive out to Marino's," Peter said from the doorway. He'd changed out of his work clothes into the flannel shirt she'd given him three Christmases ago, the elbows gone soft and thin.

"In this? Absolutely not." She set the shallots on the cutting board. "Besides, I already thawed the scallops."

He came in and started clearing the mail off the table — the accumulated sediment of two weeks, catalogs and a jury summons and a postcard from his sister in Tucson. Underneath it all was the tablecloth they never used, the linen one, still creased from the drawer.

"Twenty years," he said. "You know what I keep thinking about? That apartment on Chandler Street. The radiator."

"The radiator that only worked in July."

"We slept in coats."

"You slept in a coat. I slept in your coat, and my coat, and a comforter." She was slicing now, quick and unbothered, the way she did everything in the kitchen. "Get the candles from the hall closet. The tall ones, not the emergency ones."

He found them behind the vacuum, two ivory tapers in a box from a wedding neither of them could place anymore. He set them in the brass holders his mother had left him and stood back to look.

Dana came over with the pan still hissing and looked too. The table was crooked with the tablecloth, the candles unlit, the rain making its noise against the house.

"It's not much," Peter said.

"It's exactly enough," she said, and handed him the matches.


Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He stood in the kitchen still wearing his work boots, holding the grocery bag, trying to remember whether Dana liked the shallots minced or sliced. Twelve years and he still couldn't keep it straight.

He was halfway through ruining them when she came in, dropping her bag by the door.

"You're early," she said.

"You're late."

"Mrs. Petrillo's daughter called about the insurance thing again." Dana kicked off her shoes and came to look over his shoulder. She reached past him, took the knife, and fixed the shallots without commentary. "Chicken?"

"The one with the mustard."

"You always make that."

"You always eat it."

She laughed and got the wine down from over the refrigerator, the bottle they'd been saving since the trip to Sonoma, which had been three years ago now and which they'd meant to repeat. She poured two glasses and set his by the stove where he'd forget it.

They'd agreed on nothing fancy this year. No reservation, no drive downtown, no getting dressed up to sit in a loud room and shout across a table. Dana had said the words *quiet evening* on the phone Tuesday and Marcus had felt something in his chest unclench.

She set the table with the good plates, then reconsidered and used the regular ones. Outside the window over the sink the light went orange and then blue. He turned the burner down. She turned the radio on, low, and then off again, and they cooked in the sound of the oven ticking.

"Twelve," she said.

"Feels like more."

"Careful."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant."

He handed her a spoon to taste. She tasted it, made a face, added salt, and handed it back.


The Fifteenth

Diane found the reservation confirmation still sitting in her inbox, unopened, three days after she'd made it. She deleted it.

"I canceled Marchetti's," she said, coming into the kitchen where Ray was scraping ice off the freezer coils with a butter knife, a job he'd been promising to do since February.

He didn't look up. "Good. I didn't want to put on the shoes."

"You have other shoes."

"I don't have other shoes that don't hurt."

She leaned against the counter. Fifteen years ago tonight they'd stood in front of a judge in Hartford because the church wanted eleven months' notice and neither of them had eleven months of patience. Her sister had cried. His mother hadn't come.

"I could make the chicken thing," Ray said. "With the lemons."

"We had that Tuesday."

"We had a version of it Tuesday."

Diane opened the fridge and took inventory: half a rotisserie chicken, a bag of arugula going soft at the edges, most of a bottle of Chardonnay she'd opened Thursday. "There's the wine."

"There's the wine," he agreed. He shut the freezer, wiped his hands on his jeans. "You want to eat outside? It's not terrible out."

They carried plates to the back steps because the patio table had a wasp nest under it that neither of them had dealt with. The chicken was cold. The arugula was fine. Ray had found two matching glasses, which felt like an accomplishment.

"Fifteen," Diane said.

"I know."

"I didn't get you anything."

"I got you the freezer."

She laughed, and he seemed pleased with himself, and the light went gold over the Kowalskis' fence, and for a while neither of them said anything. A car went by. Somewhere a screen door banged.

"Next year we'll do something," Diane said.

Ray refilled her glass. "Sure," he said. "Next year."


The forecast said rain, so Naomi moved the plan indoors.

She got home first, which was unusual. Dev's commute from the hospital had stretched longer since they'd moved to the north side of Columbus, and she used the extra forty minutes to lay out the good plates—the ones from his mother, white with a thin gold rim, used maybe six times in eleven years. She put the record player on the kitchen counter and dug through the milk crate until she found the Ella Fitzgerald album they'd danced to badly at their wedding reception.

Dev came in shaking water off his jacket, holding a paper bag against his chest.

"You bought something," she said.

"I bought two somethings." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of prosecco and a small carton of the lemon cake from the Italian place on Fifth. "The bakery one. Not the grocery one."

"I made lasagna."

"I know. I could smell it from the driveway." He kissed the side of her head, then held her shoulders and looked at the table. "The plates."

"Eleven years."

"Eleven," he agreed, like he was testing whether the number held up.

They ate slowly. Naomi told him about the tenure committee and how she'd nearly walked out. Dev told her about a nine-year-old with a broken wrist who'd asked him seventeen questions about the X-ray machine. Between the lasagna and the cake, the rain finally came, loud on the kitchen window.

"We should have gone somewhere," he said. "Toured a vineyard. Something people do."

Naomi refilled his glass. "We did that for five. You got a sunburn and I got food poisoning."

"That's true."

She stood and turned up Ella. He was already rising, hand out, and they danced badly again, in socks, on the linoleum, until the song ended.


The Twenty-Fifth

Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter she'd wiped down that morning, and decided against the fancy thing. No tablecloth, no candles that would make Dev sneeze.

She was cutting tomatoes when he came in, tie already loosened.

"You beat me," he said.

"Rossi canceled his four o'clock. I took it as a sign."

Dev set down a paper bag and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Lambrusco they'd drunk the night he proposed, in the apartment on Delancey with the radiator that clanked like someone was trapped inside it.

"You didn't," she said.

"Six ninety-nine. They still make it. I checked three stores."

"That's disgusting. I love it."

He washed his hands and took over the tomatoes, because she cut them too thick and they both knew it. She started the water for pasta. Twenty-five years had worn their movements around the kitchen into something like choreography — she stepped left, he reached past her, neither of them looked up.

"Sofia called," she said. "She wanted to know if we were doing anything."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That we were going to eat pasta and watch that documentary about the volcano."

Dev laughed. "Did she believe you?"

"She said, 'Mom, it's twenty-five years.' I said, 'Yes, and I'm tired.'"

They ate at the small table by the window. The Lambrusco was worse than either of them remembered, sweet and thin, and they finished the bottle anyway. Outside, someone's dog was losing its mind about something in the alley.

"I'd do it again," Dev said, not making a production of it.

Marisol reached over and put her hand flat on the back of his, the way she had in a hundred waiting rooms and car rides.

"Volcano?" she said.

"Volcano."


The Twentieth

Marguerite came home at four-thirty because the restaurant had canceled, which was fine, because she had never wanted the restaurant. She found Dev in the kitchen with flour on his forearms, the radio playing the station that only came in clearly on damp days.

"You're early," he said.

"They double-booked. Some rehearsal dinner."

"Good." He didn't look up. "I bought scallops anyway. Just in case."

She set her bag on the chair that had been broken since 2011 and never fixed because it still held bags. Twenty years ago that night they had stood in her mother's backyard in Peoria under a tent that leaked, and her cousin had gotten sick in the hydrangeas, and Dev had said his vows too fast because he was nervous, and she had made him say them again.

"Do you want to open the wine now or wait?" she asked.

"Now. Waiting is for people with self-control."

She opened it. It was a Barolo they'd bought on a trip to Chicago and kept for three years for no reason except that keeping it made it feel like they were the kind of people who kept things. She poured two glasses and handed him one, and he touched it to hers without ceremony, a habit so old it had stopped being romantic and started being punctuation.

He seared the scallops badly. She said so. He said she was welcome to cook, and she said she was welcome not to, and they ate at the small table instead of the dining room, because the dining room was full of their daughter's boxes from her move.

Later Marguerite put on the record he'd given her the first winter. They didn't dance. They sat, listening, her feet in his lap, the house settling around them, and Dev said, "Twenty," and she said, "I know," and that was enough.


Ellen came home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen of their house in Dayton with her coat still on, looking at the counter, trying to remember whether Tom liked the crusty bread or the soft rolls with the pot roast. Twenty years. You would think she'd know.

She had the roast in by four. At four-thirty she called him.

"I'm leaving now," he said. "There's a thing with the Hendrick account, but I'm leaving."

"There's always a thing."

"I'm walking out the door. I'm in the parking lot. Listen." He held the phone up and she heard traffic, faintly, and a man's voice saying something about the Bengals.

He came in at five-fifteen with a grocery bag, which annoyed her, because she'd already bought everything.

"Candles," he said, setting them out. Six of them, the tall white kind, and a box of matches. "You said the power's been flickering."

"So we're eating in the dark."

"We're eating by candlelight. There's a difference." He was already taking off his tie, one-handed, the way he'd done every evening for two decades. He looked tired. He'd looked tired since about 2009.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Ellen had made the potatoes with too much butter, which was the point. Tom poured the wine into the good glasses, then noticed one had a water spot and got up to rinse it.

"Sit down," she said. "Nobody's inspecting."

"I'm inspecting."

He sat. The candles were, she had to admit, a good idea. They ate slowly. Around seven their daughter called from Columbus and they put her on speaker and talked to her for twenty minutes about nothing.

Afterward Tom did the dishes and Ellen dried, and neither of them said anything, and it was fine.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter she'd wiped down that morning, trying to remember if fifteen years was crystal or china. Neither, probably. Fifteen years was the year you stopped looking it up.

She'd bought scallops. Marcus liked scallops and she'd learned, eventually, not to overcook them—to leave them alone in the hot pan until they let go on their own. She set the package in the sink to thaw and went to change out of her work clothes.

He came in at six-forty, carrying a paper bag from the wine place on Halsted and a bunch of ranunculus, because she'd told him years ago that roses felt like an apology.

"You're early," he said.

"Peterson canceled. I've been standing in my own kitchen for an hour feeling like a burglar."

He laughed and set the flowers down and kissed the side of her head. Then he took off his tie and hung it on the back of a chair, where it would stay until Sunday.

They cooked together, mostly. He handled the asparagus and the wine, she did the scallops, and they moved around each other in the narrow galley with the practiced choreography of people who had negotiated this space through two job changes, a miscarriage, one very bad winter, and the ongoing question of whether to finally replace the dishwasher.

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

"The thing" was reading the vows again. They'd done it maybe six times in fifteen years, never on purpose.

"Not tonight," Dana said. "Tonight I just want to sit here."

Marcus refilled her glass. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped.

"Okay," he said. "That's a good one too."


Marisol found the recipe card in the junk drawer, wedged behind a dead battery and a coupon for tires. Her mother's handwriting, the ink gone brown: *arroz con gandules, para Sol.* She set it on the counter and started pulling cans from the pantry.

"You're cooking?" Dean asked from the doorway. He still had his work boots on, one hand braced against the frame while he toed them off. "I was going to take you to Bianchi's."

"Bianchi's is loud. And I don't want to put on real pants."

He laughed. "Fifteen years and you finally admit it."

"Fourteen," she said. "Fifteen is next year. This is the other one."

He remembered then. Not the wedding—the night in the hospital parking lot in Sioux Falls, after his father's surgery, when she'd found him sitting on the curb at two in the morning and hadn't said anything, just sat down beside him on the cold concrete and stayed. They'd been dating four months. She'd driven six hours.

"That one," he agreed. He came around the counter and took the can opener from her hand. "You chop. I'll do the cans. You always cut yourself on the lids."

"One time."

"Three times."

They worked without music. Outside, a neighbor's motion light kept flicking on and off—raccoons, probably, in the recycling. Dean opened a bottle of wine they'd been saving without any real occasion in mind, and Marisol found the two mismatched glasses that had survived four moves.

The rice came out a little dry. They ate at the kitchen table anyway, plates on placemats they'd never once used for company.

"To the parking lot," Dean said, lifting his glass.

Marisol touched hers to his. "To you not saying anything either."

Afterward she washed and he dried, and they went to bed early, which was, they'd both agree, the whole point.


The rain started around four, which Dana took as a good sign. Nothing gave her more permission to stay in than weather.

She got home first and found that Marcus had already been there — the good cutting board out, garlic peeled into a little ceramic dish, a bottle of the Sicilian red they'd bought two summers ago standing on the counter like a witness. He'd left a note under it: *Back by 6. Don't touch the sauce.*

She touched the sauce. It needed salt.

When he came in he was soaked through, holding a paper bag against his chest like an infant. "They didn't have the cannoli," he said. "I got the other thing. The ricotta thing."

"The sfogliatella."

"I couldn't say it, so I pointed."

Fifteen years. They'd talked about going somewhere — the place downtown with the tasting menu, or even the coast, a weekend, the whole production. But in February her mother had gotten sick, and in June the water heater, and somewhere in there the ambition had quietly drained out of the plan and left behind this: a Tuesday, a pot of red sauce, two people in a kitchen that needed painting.

Marcus put on the record he always put on. Dana groaned, as she always did, and didn't ask him to change it.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which was the concession to formality. He told her about the argument at work; she told him about the woman at the pharmacy who'd called her *young lady*. At some point he reached over and turned her wedding ring around her finger with his thumb, the way he did, absently, like checking that a door was locked.

"Fifteen," he said.

"I know."

"You want to know the truth? I thought we'd be somewhere else by now."

Dana considered the rain, the ricotta thing, his hand.

"We are," she said.


The Twenty-Fifth

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

By the time Dennis came through the garage door at six-forty, she had found them—two half-burned tapers from Christmas—and set them in juice glasses because the actual candlesticks had gone to their daughter's apartment in Chicago and never come back.

"You beat me," he said.

"Cheryl let us out early. Nobody was buying anything."

He set down a paper bag. Inside was a bottle of the Riesling they'd had at a winery outside Traverse City the summer Katie turned nine, or something close to it; the label had changed. He'd been to three stores.

"You said no gifts," she said.

"It's not a gift, it's dinner."

She had the pork chops going. He washed his hands and took over the green beans, because she always undercooked them and he always overcooked them and after twenty-five years they had agreed only to complain quietly. They worked around each other in the narrow galley, the old choreography, hip to hip at the stove.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room. The candles were too short and guttered early, and Dennis got up and turned the overhead light back on, which ruined the effect and neither of them minded.

"Do you remember," Marguerite said, "how hot it was."

"Your mother wouldn't take her jacket off."

"She was cold. She was always cold."

He refilled her glass. Outside a car went by with its stereo up, and the sound faded down Willoughby Street, and the house was quiet again.

"Twenty-five," he said.

"I know it."

They stayed at the table a long while, not saying much, until the wine was gone and the dishes still weren't done.


The Anniversary

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter where she'd left the good tablecloth folded that morning, and decided she'd rather not iron it. Twenty-five years. If the wrinkles bothered Marcus, he could take it up with the linen.

She had the chicken in the oven by five-thirty. Lemon, garlic, too much butter—the way he liked it, the way her cardiologist would not. The radio played the classical station neither of them ever chose deliberately but never turned off either.

Marcus came through the door at six with a paper bag under one arm and rain in his gray hair. "The florist was closed," he announced. "So I got you these." He produced a bunch of grocery store tulips, yellow, already drooping.

"They're terrible."

"They're seasonally appropriate."

He set them in the blue pitcher because the vase had broken two moves ago and neither of them had replaced it. Then he found the bottle he'd been hiding behind the flour canister since March, a Bordeaux from a year that meant something to him and nothing to her.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room. Dana had insisted on that part when they talked about it Tuesday—no reservations, no driving forty minutes to somewhere loud. Marcus had agreed faster than she expected.

"I found the photo," he said, halfway through. "The one from the courthouse. You look furious in it."

"I was furious. Your brother was late."

"He's still late."

She laughed and reached across for his hand, and he held it, and the chicken got cold, and neither of them minded. Outside the rain kept on. Later they'd do the dishes together, badly, the way they had for twenty-five years.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, trying to remember whether the good olive oil was behind the vinegar or under the sink. Fifteen years. It seemed like something that should announce itself, and instead it was a Tuesday with rain on the windows.

She had the water boiling when Dev came in, shaking out his umbrella in the hallway the way she'd asked him not to a hundred times.

"You're cooking," he said.

"I'm boiling water. Don't get excited."

He kissed the top of her head and set a paper bag on the counter. Inside was a bottle of the Chianti they'd had in Rome, or close enough — the label was different, but he'd asked the man at the store to find something similar, and the man had shrugged and handed him this.

"We said no gifts," she said.

"Wine isn't a gift. Wine is dinner."

They ate at the small table by the window instead of the dining room, because the dining room table had become a place where mail went to die. Dev grated the parmesan. Marisol overcooked the pasta slightly and neither of them mentioned it. Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped.

"Do you remember what we ate?" she asked. "At the reception?"

"Chicken."

"There was no chicken. There was that salmon thing your aunt complained about."

"There's always chicken," Dev said. "It's a law."

She laughed, and he watched her do it, and thought about how the laugh had changed and hadn't. They finished the bottle. Later they'd argue mildly about which movie, and fall asleep twenty minutes in, and one of them would wake and turn off the lamp.

For now, she refilled his glass. He held it up.

"Fifteen," he said.

"Fifteen," she agreed.


Marguerite found the recipe card in the drawer beneath the takeout menus, her mother's handwriting gone brown at the edges. Twenty years since Daniel had made this for her—badly, in a studio apartment with one working burner, the night she'd agreed to marry him.

"You're not supposed to be in here," Daniel said from the doorway. He had flour on his forearm.

"I'm supervising."

"You're interfering." But he pulled out the chair for her anyway, and she sat, and he went back to the counter where the chicken was waiting, pale and unpromising.

Outside, the November dark had come early. Their neighbor's motion light kept snapping on—a cat, probably, or the raccoon that had been getting into the recycling. Marguerite watched Daniel work. He'd gotten better in twenty years, though not by much. He still crowded the pan.

"Give it room," she said.

"I'm giving it room."

"You're giving it the room a Chihuahua would need."

He laughed, and pushed a piece of chicken to the far edge, an offering. She got up and found the good glasses, the ones from his grandmother, which they used maybe twice a year and washed by hand afterward. She poured the wine while the kitchen filled with garlic and rosemary and the small companionable racket of a person cooking.

They ate at the table, not the couch. That had been the rule for the evening, negotiated over text that afternoon. No phones, no television, no discussion of the roof.

"It's not bad," Marguerite said.

"It's edible."

"It's better than the first time."

"The first time you ate all of it," he said. "That's how I knew."

She reached over and touched his wrist, where the flour still was, and left her hand there while the food went cold between them.


Marisol found the recipe card in the junk drawer, still warm-looking despite the water stain across one corner. Thirty years ago she'd copied it down from Daniel's mother in a kitchen in Bakersfield, misspelling *chile* twice, and now the paper felt like something excavated.

"You're not making the whole thing," Daniel said from the doorway. He had his reading glasses pushed up into his gray hair, which meant he'd been paying bills.

"I'm making the whole thing."

"That's four hours."

"It's four hours if you don't help." She held out the card. He took it, squinted, and lowered his glasses. She watched him read his mother's handwriting and watched his jaw shift the way it did.

They'd agreed on quiet. No restaurant, no cousins driving up from Fresno, no toasts. Their daughter had offered to fly in from Denver and they'd told her to come at Christmas instead, which had required saying it twice before she believed them.

Daniel took over the chiles, splitting them and scraping seeds into the sink while Marisol worked on the picadillo. He put on the Los Panchos record, the one with the skip in the third track, and neither of them said anything when it skipped.

"I found the photos," he said around four o'clock. "The ones from the courthouse."

"You were so skinny."

"You were late."

"Twenty minutes."

"Forty."

She let him have it. The kitchen filled with the smell of cumin and scorched pepper skin, and at some point the light through the window over the sink went orange and then blue, and they ate at the small table instead of the dining room because the dining room was for company.

Afterward, Daniel washed and Marisol dried, and she thought about saying something about thirty years, and decided the dish towel in her hands said it well enough.


The forecast had promised rain, so Dana bought the good candles.

"Thirty years," Michael said, setting the table with the plates they never used. "I keep waiting to feel old about it."

"You look old about it."

"That's the gray. It's distinguished." He straightened a fork. "Do you want the wine now or with dinner?"

"Now. Definitely now."

She'd made the lamb, the one from the stained cookbook that had been her mother's, the recipe she'd botched the first time she cooked it for him in 1994 in that apartment on Delaware Street with the radiator that clanked like someone was trapped inside it. He'd eaten every bite then and told her it was perfect, and she'd known he was lying, and she'd married him anyway.

Michael poured two glasses and handed her one. Outside, the rain finally started, tapping the kitchen window.

"To thirty," he said.

"To the radiator."

He laughed. "God. That radiator."

They ate slowly. The kids called, both of them, Jenna from Portland and Sam from his car in a Target parking lot, and Dana put them on speaker and they all talked over each other for twenty minutes before hanging up.

Afterward Michael washed and Dana dried, the way they'd done it since the dishwasher broke in 2009 and they'd discovered they preferred it.

"I found something," he said, drying his hands. He pulled a photograph from the drawer by the phone — the two of them at somebody's wedding, impossibly young, her hair enormous, his tie awful.

"Where was this?"

"Box in the garage. I was looking for the Christmas lights."

"In April?"

"I got distracted."

She looked at the picture a long time. Then she propped it against the salt shaker, where they'd see it at breakfast, and turned off the kitchen light, and they went to sit together and listen to the rain.


The Twenty-Second

Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter, trying to remember whether Dev liked the chicken with lemon or the one with the mustard.

Lemon. She'd made the mustard one for his mother, and he'd eaten it politely.

By the time he came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven going and the good plates down from the top shelf. He stopped in the doorway.

"You cooked."

"Don't sound so astonished."

"I'm not astonished. I'm suspicious." He set a paper bag on the table and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Portuguese wine they'd bought the first year, when it was all they could afford, and which they now bought on purpose. "I stopped at Grieco's."

"You remembered."

"Marisol." He hung his jacket on the back of a chair. "It's the twenty-second."

They ate at the table instead of on the couch. Outside, the rain kept on, and the neighbor's motion light kept flicking on and off for no visible reason, which had annoyed them for eleven years.

"Do you remember what you said to me," Dev asked, "on the courthouse steps?"

"I said it was a stupid place to get married."

"You said it was a stupid place to get married, and then you cried."

"I did not cry."

"You cried a lot."

She refilled his glass rather than argue. Twelve years. Two apartments, one house with a bad roof, one long bad year they didn't talk about much anymore, and this: a Tuesday, a chicken, the same wine.

Later he washed and she dried, and neither of them suggested going out, or doing anything else at all.

"Same time next year?" he said.

"I'll check my calendar," she said, and hung up the towel.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into the steady patter that Priya loved and Dan tolerated. She stood at the kitchen window watching it bead on the deck railing while the rice cooker clicked over to warm.

"Twelve years," Dan said, coming in with two glasses. "Feels like less."

"It feels like exactly twelve to me." She took the wine without looking away from the glass. "You had more hair."

He touched the back of his head, a reflex she found endearing after all this time. "You said you didn't notice."

"I said I didn't mind."

They had agreed on no restaurant. Last year they'd gone downtown and spent the whole meal being interrupted by a server who kept calling them "you guys," and Priya had said, in the car afterward, that she'd rather have eaten cereal at the counter with the radio on. So tonight it was the chicken curry his mother-in-law had taught him to make badly and Priya had taught him to make well, and the good plates, the ones that lived in the cabinet above the refrigerator.

Dan set the table while she finished the sauce. He put out cloth napkins, then found the candle from the bathroom, which smelled like eucalyptus and would probably ruin everything, and lit it anyway.

"That's the bathroom candle," she said.

"It's a candle."

She laughed and let it go. Halfway through dinner, the power flickered and stayed on, and they both looked up at the light fixture like it had said something.

"Do you remember the ice storm?" she asked.

"Year two. We ate crackers."

"You were so calm."

"I was terrified," Dan said. "I just didn't want you to know yet."

Priya reached across the table and took his hand, and the rain kept on, and neither of them hurried.


The rain had started around four, which meant Deborah abandoned the idea of grilling and pulled the salmon out of the freezer instead. Twenty-five years. She kept turning the number over like a stone in her pocket, trying to feel its weight.

Frank came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs he'd meant to put away in September. He shook the water off his shoulders. "The gutter's backing up again by the den."

"Not tonight."

"I'm not fixing it tonight. I'm just telling you."

She'd set the table in the dining room, which they used maybe four times a year — Thanksgiving, Christmas, when Marisol visited from Denver, and this. The good plates had a chip on one, hidden under the napkin. Frank opened the wine he'd been saving since their thirtieth birthdays, a bottle they'd carried through three moves and one basement flood.

"It might be vinegar," he said.

"Then we'll drink the other one."

It wasn't vinegar. It was thin and a little sour but drinkable, and Frank made a face that made her laugh, and that was the first real laugh of the evening, which loosened something.

They ate slowly. Frank told the story about the wedding, the one where his brother lost the rings in the parking lot and they'd used Deborah's mother's for the ceremony. Deborah had heard it eleven hundred times. She let him tell it anyway, correcting only the part where he claimed he hadn't panicked.

"I was calm."

"You were gray."

Afterward they didn't move to the living room. They stayed at the table with the rain going and the candles burning down unevenly, and Deborah reached across and put her hand over his, over the knuckles that had gotten thick and stiff over the years.

"Twenty-five," Frank said.

"I know."

He turned his hand over and held on.


Mara found the receipt tucked in a book she was reboxing for the move: fourteen dollars and change, a diner on Fillmore, dated ten years ago that Thursday. She carried it into the kitchen where Dev was scrubbing the burner grates, sleeves shoved to his elbows.

"Look what survived."

He dried his hands and squinted. "You ordered the pancakes. I remember because you ate half of mine too."

"You offered."

"I did not offer."

They had been married six years, but the diner was the beginning — the night she'd said, on impulse, that she wasn't going home, and they'd talked until the cook flipped the sign. Ten years felt like it deserved something, though neither of them wanted a restaurant. Dev had spent the week interviewing candidates and could not face another table with cloth napkins.

So they made a plan. She would handle the pancakes; he would handle everything else, which turned out to mean lighting the two candlesticks they'd received as a wedding gift and never used, and finding the playlist he'd built for her the first winter, full of songs he now found embarrassing.

By seven the kitchen smelled like butter. Mara burned the first pancake and swore. Dev leaned against the counter with a beer and offered unhelpful commentary until she pointed the spatula at him.

They ate at the table with the good candles going and the boxes stacked against the wall, plates of pancakes and a bowl of strawberries he'd cut into uneven halves. She told him she'd been thinking about the cook who let them stay. He said he'd been thinking about how she'd looked in that awful green coat.

"It was a great coat."

"It was a terrible coat," he said. "I loved it."

Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Neither of them got up.


The Anniversary

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

She had the chicken in the oven by six. Twenty-two years. It seemed both impossible and about right, the way a long drive feels when you finally park.

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

"You said no gifts," Dana said.

"I said no *big* gifts." He pulled out a bottle of the cheap Riesling they'd drunk the whole first year of their marriage, when they lived above the laundromat on Fuller Street and the floor was always warm. "They still make it. I checked three stores."

She laughed and took it from him. "This was terrible wine."

"It was a terrible apartment."

He found the corkscrew while she pulled the chicken out, and they moved around each other the way people do after two decades, without collisions. Marcus set the small table by the window. He put out the good napkins, then thought better of it and put out the regular ones, because Dana would've said something.

They ate slowly. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Dana told him about the argument at work; Marcus told her that Ellie had called from school, only for money, but she'd stayed on the line twenty minutes anyway.

"To Fuller Street," Dana said, raising the awful wine.

Marcus considered her across the table — the reading glasses pushed up in her hair, the flour on her sleeve.

"To the next twenty-two," he said.

They clinked. It was, in fact, still terrible wine. They finished the bottle anyway.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter she'd wiped that morning, and decided she'd make the shrimp thing Marcus liked, the one with too much garlic.

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

"You cooked," he said.

"Don't sound so shocked."

"I'm not shocked. I'm suspicious." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the Riesling they'd had in Traverse City, the summer his mother was sick and they'd driven up anyway because Dana insisted they needed one good weekend. "They only had the 2019."

"That's the one we had."

"Was it?"

"Marcus."

"Fine. I remembered." He found the corkscrew in the drawer where it had lived for eleven years and worked the cork out slowly, the way he did everything.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which felt formal enough to be a little funny. Dana had put out the cloth napkins her aunt gave them. Marcus kept touching his, folding and unfolding it.

"Fifteen," he said. "That's crystal, I looked it up."

"We're not doing crystal."

"I know. I just thought you should be aware of what we're forgoing."

She laughed, and he watched her do it, the way he'd watched her at a stranger's wedding in 2009 when she'd been complaining about her shoes.

Afterward they did the dishes together without discussing it, him washing, her drying, the radiator clanking. The snow kept up outside the window over the sink. Around nine they moved to the living room and put on nothing in particular, and Dana fell asleep against his arm before ten, which Marcus didn't mind. He sat there a while longer with the lamp on, not wanting to wake her, not wanting the day to be over yet.


The Twenty-Fifth

Diane got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they'd stacked the mail for three days, and decided the mail could wait until tomorrow.

By the time Paul came in at six-fifteen, she had the good plates down from the top shelf, the ones from his mother, and was arguing with a bottle of wine that had gone stubborn.

"Let me," he said, setting down a grocery bag. He worked the corkscrew and got it on the second try. "I brought the bread from the place on Ellis. They were out of the seeded, so."

"Unseeded is fine."

"I know it's fine. I'm reporting."

She laughed. Twenty-five years and he still reported.

They'd talked about going somewhere—Diane's sister had recommended an Italian place downtown with a wait list—but they'd both, independently, come to the same conclusion sometime in the last week and admitted it Tuesday night: neither of them wanted to be in a room with other people.

So there was chicken, and the bread, and a salad Paul made too much dressing for, and the wine. Diane lit two candles that had been in the drawer since Christmas.

"Do you remember the reception?" she said. "The DJ?"

"He played the wrong song for the first dance."

"And you just went with it."

"I didn't know it was wrong. I found out later, from you, at length." He refilled her glass. "You looked at me like I'd done it on purpose."

"You looked so pleased with yourself."

"I was pleased. I'd gotten you to marry me."

They ate slowly. Around nine, Diane put on the actual song, the one they'd meant to have, and they danced badly in the space between the table and the refrigerator, and the dishes stayed where they were until morning.


Marisol found the note on the refrigerator at 4:40, held there by a magnet shaped like a lobster. *Don't cook. — D.*

She texted him a question mark. Dominic sent back a photograph of a grocery bag on the passenger seat of his truck, then, thirty seconds later, a second text: *Also don't look in the trunk.*

He came through the door at six with the bag in one arm and a paper-wrapped bundle of ranunculus in the other, the pink kind she'd carried at the courthouse eleven years ago because the florist had been out of peonies and she'd decided on the spot that she liked these better. He set them on the counter and kissed the side of her head.

"Eleven," he said. "That's steel."

"Who told you that?"

"The internet. I got you a wok."

She laughed so hard she had to sit down on a kitchen chair. He was already unpacking: shrimp, a knob of ginger, scallions, a bottle of the vinegary Riesling she liked and he pretended to. He had never been much of a cook. He was, however, extremely good at following instructions, which was how their marriage had survived a cross-country move, a miscarriage, and two years of her father living in the guest room.

"You mince," she said, taking the knife from him. "I'll do the heat."

They worked around each other in the small kitchen, hips brushing, the radio on low. The wok smoked; the shrimp curled pink in about ninety seconds. They ate at the coffee table with the television off, plates on their knees, and Dominic told her about a man at work who had tried to microwave a hard-boiled egg.

Later she found the trunk contents: a folding chair, because hers had broken in July, and he'd remembered.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the ingredients that morning: two ribeyes, a head of garlic, a bag of fingerling potatoes going soft in the corner. She'd planned to have everything going by six.

She was halfway through peeling potatoes when Marcus came in, carrying a paper bag against his chest like something breakable.

"You're supposed to be at the hospital until seven," she said.

"Traded with Ellis. I told you that." He set the bag down. "Twice."

"You told the version of me who was answering email."

He pulled out a bottle of wine, then a second, smaller bag. Inside was a slab of cheesecake from the place on Delaware Avenue, the one they'd gone to after the courthouse fifteen years ago because neither of them had wanted a reception, and because Marcus's mother had made a scene about the lack of a church, and they'd needed sugar and a booth and forty minutes of quiet.

"They still make it," he said.

"They still make it."

He took the peeler out of her hand and took over the potatoes while she got the pan hot. They worked without much talking. The kitchen filled with the smell of butter and garlic and the particular smoke of steak done properly. Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television, which felt formal enough to be funny. Marcus said the potatoes were undercooked. Dana said he'd peeled them, so that was on him.

Later, with the cheesecake between them and one fork each, she asked if he'd do it again — the courthouse, the bad suit, his mother in the hallway.

"Sooner," he said, and reached for her plate.


The invitation had said "casual," so Marguerite wore the green dress she'd owned for eleven years and Dev wore the shirt with the small ink stain near the cuff. It didn't matter. The invitation was from themselves, to themselves, taped to the refrigerator three weeks earlier in Dev's blocky handwriting: *Sept. 14. Dinner. Us. No phones.*

They had met on September 14th, twenty-five years ago, in the basement laundry room of a building in Pittsburgh that had since been torn down. Their wedding anniversary was in June and they always let it slide past with a card and takeout, but this one they kept.

Dev made the mushroom thing—the recipe he'd bungled the first time he cooked for her, when the cream had broken and he'd served it anyway out of stubbornness. He'd made it a hundred times since. Marguerite hovered, then stopped hovering, then set the small table by the window with the cloth napkins they never used and the good glasses, two of which had survived four moves and a toddler.

"You're supposed to be relaxing," he said.

"I am relaxing. This is what it looks like."

Their son called at seven, and they let it go to voicemail, feeling briefly like criminals. Outside, the neighbor's sprinkler ticked across the lawn. Marguerite poured the wine and Dev brought the pan over still hot, and they ate slowly, and she told him he'd oversalted it, and he said he knew, and she ate all of it.

Afterward they didn't move. The light went blue, then gray. He described the exact sound the dryer had made that night in 1999, a rhythmic thumping, and she said that wasn't the dryer, that was somebody upstairs.

"Twenty-five years," Dev said, "and you're still correcting me."

"You've got twenty-five more coming," she said, and reached over, and took his hand.


The Twentieth

Diane got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning—*don't eat, I'm cooking*—and realized she had no idea what she'd meant to make.

She was slicing onions when Marcus came in, tie already loosened, holding a paper bag against his chest like something fragile.

"You're supposed to be at the office until seven," she said.

"I left at four. Nobody noticed." He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the terrible sparkling wine they'd bought for eleven dollars in 2004, when neither of them knew anything. "They still make it. I checked three stores."

Diane laughed and put down the knife. "That was the worst wine I've ever had."

"It was. It really was."

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room had become the place where the mail piled up. She'd made the pasta with the vodka sauce, the one she'd made him on their third date when she was trying to seem more capable than she was. He remembered. He said so.

"Twenty years," Marcus said. "You want to do the thing?"

"What thing?"

"The thing where we say what we'd change."

Diane thought about it while she twisted her fork. Outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing. "I'd have taken the Portland job," she said. "Just to see."

"Would you have taken me?"

"Obviously."

He poured the wine, which was as bad as they'd promised each other it would be, and they drank it anyway. Later they sat on the back steps with the porch light off, watching the neighbor's motion sensor click on and off, arguing gently about whether they'd been happy the whole time or only most of it.


The rain started around four, which Dana took as a good sign. She'd been hoping for weather that would make staying in feel like a choice rather than a default.

"Twelve years," Marcus said, coming into the kitchen with his tie already loosened. He'd left the office early, something he almost never did anymore. "Do you remember what we ate?"

"Pad thai. From that place on Cortland that closed."

"It wasn't pad thai. It was drunken noodles, and you complained the whole time that it was too spicy, and then you finished mine."

Dana laughed and handed him a knife. "Then you can make the drunken noodles, since you remember it so well."

They cooked together, which they hadn't done in months—not properly, not with both of them in the small kitchen bumping hips at the stove. Marcus put on the playlist he'd made her years ago, the one with too many Al Green songs. Dana chopped garlic and told him about the argument she'd had with her sister. He listened while he seared the chicken, offering the occasional grunt of solidarity.

They ate at the table instead of the couch. Marcus opened a bottle of wine he'd been saving without quite knowing what for.

"I keep thinking we should go somewhere," Dana said. "Italy. Somewhere."

"We could."

"We say that every year."

"We do." He refilled her glass. "But I'd rather be here than at some restaurant where they make you feel bad for lingering."

Afterward, they left the dishes and sat on the porch under the overhang, watching the rain come off the gutter in a silver rope. Dana leaned into him. Marcus rested his chin on the top of her head, and neither of them said anything for a long while, which was, they both understood, the point.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter as if she'd forgotten what counters were for, and then she started pulling things out of the refrigerator: the chicken thighs, the lemons, the bunch of parsley going slightly limp at the edges.

Dev came in at six-forty with a paper bag under his arm and rain on his shoulders. "You started without me."

"I got out early. Nobody scheduled anything after three." She glanced at the bag. "What's that?"

"Cake. From the place on Warren." He set it down and shrugged out of his jacket. "Not the good place. The good place closes at five."

"The Warren place is fine."

"The Warren place is mediocre and we both know it."

Fifteen years ago that night they'd stood in a courthouse hallway in Providence with two friends and a borrowed camera, and afterward eaten at a diner because everything else was closed. They'd talked about doing something bigger this year — a weekend somewhere, a restaurant with tablecloths — and then Dev's mother had her hip surgery and Marisol's department got restructured and the year had simply used itself up.

He took over the chicken. She sliced lemons badly, in uneven rounds, the way she always did, and he didn't say anything about it, the way he always didn't.

They ate at the table instead of in front of the television, which was the entire ceremony. Dev poured wine into the good glasses, one of which had a chip on the rim that they'd been meaning to deal with since 2019.

"To the Warren place," Marisol said.

"To low expectations, honored."

She laughed and reached across for his hand, and outside the rain kept up steadily against the windows, and neither of them got up for a long time.


The Twentieth

Marcus got home first, which almost never happened. He stood in the kitchen of their house in Dayton with a paper bag of groceries and tried to remember whether Ellen liked the shallots minced or sliced.

She came in at six-forty, still in her work clothes, hair pulled back the way she wore it for long shifts at the clinic. She stopped in the doorway.

"You're cooking."

"I'm attempting," he said. "There's a difference."

"Twenty years, and you pick tonight to learn."

He handed her a glass of the Chianti they'd been saving without ever deciding what for. She kicked off her shoes in the hallway, the same spot she'd been kicking them off since 2004, and he'd stopped complaining about it around 2011.

They ate at the kitchen table instead of the dining room, because the dining room table had their daughter's college applications spread across it and neither of them wanted to move anything. The chicken was overcooked. Ellen said it wasn't. Marcus said she was a liar, and she agreed, and they finished it anyway.

"Do you remember the reception?" she asked.

"I remember your uncle giving that toast."

"God. Eleven minutes."

"Your mother timed it."

Ellen laughed and refilled both glasses. Outside, somebody's dog was barking at nothing. She reached over and turned off the overhead light, leaving just the little lamp above the stove, and the kitchen went soft and yellow.

"I didn't get you anything," she said.

"I didn't either."

"Good."

They stayed at the table a long while after the plates were empty. Marcus told her about a client who'd cried in his office that afternoon. Ellen told him about a patient who'd brought the whole staff a coffee cake. At some point she put her feet up on his chair, and he rested a hand on her ankle, and neither of them moved to clear the dishes.


Marisol got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still holding her keys, looking at the counter as if she'd never seen it before, then set down the paper bag from the market on Beacon Street: two ribeyes, a bunch of asparagus, a lemon.

Ten years since the night they'd met at Danny's cousin's engagement party, both of them hiding on the back porch from the karaoke.

By the time Danny came in at six-fifteen, she had the oven preheating and had changed out of her work clothes into jeans.

"You're early," he said.

"I left at four. Told Priya I had a thing."

"You never leave at four."

"I know." She kissed him. He smelled like the print shop, ink and warm paper.

He put a bottle of wine on the counter, the Rioja they'd had in Barcelona, and she laughed because she'd almost bought the same one and talked herself out of it.

They cooked without much of a plan. He salted the steaks too heavily, the way he always did, and she scraped some off when he wasn't looking, the way she always did. He put on the record he'd bought her the first Christmas, Bill Withers, warped slightly on the second track. They ate at the small table by the window instead of the couch.

"Ten years," Danny said. "Do you feel forty?"

"I'm thirty-six."

"I feel forty."

Afterward she washed and he dried, and they argued mildly about whether the engagement party had been in March or April. He was right; she conceded it. Later they sat on the fire escape with the last of the wine, watching a neighbor try to parallel park for a full four minutes, and Marisol rested her head on his shoulder and said nothing, because nothing needed saying.


The Twenty-Fifth

Marguerite came home at four-thirty with two bags of groceries and a bottle of wine she'd been assured was good, though she'd bought it mostly for the label, which had a heron on it.

Douglas was already in the kitchen, apron on, chopping shallots badly.

"You're doing that wrong," she said.

"I'm doing it my way."

"Your way is wrong." She set the bags down and kissed the back of his neck, which had gone soft and creased over the years in a way she found unaccountably dear. "Twenty-five years and you still can't dice."

"Twenty-five years and you still can't parallel park."

They worked around each other. There was a rhythm to it, developed over a quarter century of small kitchens, then bigger ones, then this one, which they'd renovated four years ago and argued about for six months. Douglas seared the scallops. Marguerite made the risotto because Douglas didn't have the patience for it, all that stirring, all that waiting.

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

"After. I want to be able to cry without ruining dinner."

"So you got me something sentimental."

"I got you something devastating."

They ate at the dining table instead of the kitchen island, with the good plates from his mother. Marguerite lit two candles and then blew one out because it smelled like cinnamon and clashed with the food.

"Remember the Vermont place?" Douglas said. "The wedding night. The heat didn't work."

"You wore your coat to bed."

"You laughed at me for an hour."

"I still think about it." She reached across and took his hand, turning his wedding band with her thumb, an old habit, thoughtless and constant.

Outside, a neighbor's dog barked twice and stopped. The candle guttered. Neither of them moved to fix it.


The Reservation

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking at the counter where they'd left the mail that morning, and thought about how twelve years ago this week she had stood in a different kitchen, in a rental in Bloomington, and told Rafael she thought she wanted to marry him, and he had said, "Okay, but let me finish the dishes."

She took off her coat.

By the time he came in at six-forty, she had the small table cleared of its usual sediment—bills, a broken pair of sunglasses, their daughter's field trip form—and had opened the bottle they'd been saving with no clear idea of what they were saving it for.

"You canceled," he said, seeing the table.

"I canceled."

"Thank God." He set down his bag. "I was going to call and cancel from the car and then I thought you'd be disappointed."

"I thought *you'd* be disappointed."

"I've been in meetings since seven." He loosened his tie and looked at what she'd made: rice, black beans, two eggs fried hard the way his mother did them. He laughed. "This is what we ate the entire first year."

"We couldn't afford anything else."

"We couldn't afford this."

They sat. Mia was at her grandmother's until Sunday, and the apartment had that particular hush of a house with the kid gone, which was restful for about an hour and then felt wrong. Rafael poured the wine. Dana put her feet up on the empty third chair.

"Say something anniversary-ish," she said.

He thought about it seriously, chewing. "I still like coming home."

She turned that over. It was not the kind of thing anyone would put on a card, and it was, she decided, exactly the right size.

"Yeah," she said. "Me too."


Marguerite found the recipe card in the back of the drawer, still spotted with grease from twelve years ago. She set it on the counter and smoothed the corner where it had curled.

"You're not making the lamb," Desmond said from the doorway. He had his sleeves rolled up already, tie loosened, the workday still sitting on his shoulders.

"I'm making the lamb."

"It took four hours last time."

"It took four hours because you kept opening the oven." She handed him a head of garlic. "Peel."

He sat at the kitchen island and peeled while she browned the shanks. Outside, the sprinklers came on across the street, and the light through the window went from white to amber to something softer. Neither of them turned on the overhead lamp.

"Do you remember what you said?" she asked. "At the courthouse."

"I said I hoped nobody would notice I was sweating through my shirt."

"After that."

Desmond pushed the garlic cloves into a small pile. "I said we'd figure it out."

"That's a terrible vow."

"It's held up."

She laughed and slid the pot into the oven. Fifteen years since the courthouse, a Tuesday, her sister as witness and his brother stuck in traffic in Baltimore. They'd eaten at a diner afterward because everything else was closed.

Desmond went to the living room and put on the record they'd bought at the flea market in Ithaca, the one with the skip in the third track. He came back with two glasses of the wine they'd been saving without any particular occasion in mind.

Marguerite wiped her hands on a dish towel and took one.

"To figuring it out," she said.

"To four hours," he said, and clinked her glass, and settled in to wait with her while the kitchen filled slowly with the smell of rosemary.


The reservation was for seven, but Marisol got home at six-fifteen and found Dev already in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, cancelling it on his phone.

"You're canceling Aldo's?"

"I called them from the car. Twenty-fifth anniversary and we're going to sit under a heat lamp on Grand Avenue with a birthday party at the next table?" He held up a paper bag. "I got the good scallops."

She set down her bag. "You hate searing scallops."

"I hate doing it badly. I watched a video."

She laughed, kicked off her shoes, and went to the closet for the tablecloth her mother had given them, the one with the small burn mark near the corner from the Christmas they'd tried candles. She laid it so the burn faced the wall, the way she always did, and then, thinking better of it, turned it so the burn sat between their plates.

Dev put on the Nina Simone record they'd bought in Chicago the year Ellie was born. He got the pan too hot and the first scallop seized; Marisol reached past him and lowered the flame without saying anything, and he let her.

They ate slowly. The house was quiet in a way it hadn't been in twenty years — Ellie in Boston, Sam three weeks into his lease across town, both of them texted and appeased earlier so they wouldn't call during dinner.

"Do you remember what you said in the car after the courthouse?" she asked.

"I said I was hungry."

"You said, 'Well, that's done.'" She was smiling. "Very romantic."

"It was done. Twenty-five years of it being done." He refilled her glass. "What did you think, that day?"

She considered. "That you'd be easy to live with. I was wrong about that."

"You were wrong about a lot."

"Not about the important part."

They did the dishes together, standing shoulder to shoulder, and were in bed by ten.


The rain started around four, which meant Dana had to abandon the idea of grilling. She stood at the kitchen window of their rented half-duplex in Cedar Rapids, watching the gutters overflow, and decided the oven would have to do.

Marcus came home at five-thirty with his shoes soaked through and a paper bag under his coat. He set it on the counter and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Riesling they'd split on their second date, the one they'd both pretended to like.

"You found it," Dana said.

"Hy-Vee had three bottles. I felt like I was buying a joke."

Twelve years. Not the wedding—that was in September—but the night in the parking lot of the Sinclair station on Highway 30, when her car wouldn't start and he'd stayed for two hours in February talking through the driver's side window, and she'd realized somewhere in the second hour that she didn't want him to leave.

They ate at the small table instead of the couch. Dana had made the chicken thing with the mustard sauce, which was the only recipe she'd ever fully memorized. Marcus poured the wine and made a face at the first sip, and she laughed hard enough that she had to put her glass down.

"It's worse than I remembered," he said.

"You said it tasted like apples."

"I was twenty-six and trying to impress you."

Afterward he washed and she dried, both of them working slowly, drawing it out. The rain kept up. At some point he mentioned the transmission on the Corolla, and she said not tonight, and he agreed, and they let the silence sit comfortably between them.

They watched half a movie. Dana fell asleep against his shoulder before the second act. Marcus didn't move for a while, and then he did, carefully, and carried the last of the dishes to the sink.


The Fifteenth

Dana got home first, which almost never happened. She stood in the kitchen still wearing her coat, looking at the counter where she'd left the note that morning — *Don't eat lunch. Trust me.* — and felt suddenly foolish, the way she always did about gestures.

She'd bought scallops. Fifteen years ago Marcus had taken her to a place on Dearborn that neither of them could afford, and he'd ordered scallops because he thought it sounded sophisticated, and then admitted halfway through that he'd never had them before and wasn't sure he liked them.

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

"You're cooking," he said.

"I'm attempting."

He set the bag down and pulled out a bottle of the cheap Riesling they used to drink out of jelly jars in the apartment on Wolcott, the one with the radiator that clanked all night. Dana laughed out loud.

"They still make it," he said. "I checked three stores."

"You could have called me."

"That would've ruined it."

He took over the scallops because he was better at heat, and she stood beside him with a dish towel over her shoulder, telling him about the woman at work who'd asked whether fifteen years felt long. Marcus said it depended on the year. She said that was exactly right, and he looked over at her and something in his face went soft and unguarded.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room felt like a stage set. The wine was worse than they remembered. Outside, the snow kept coming down under the streetlight, and Marcus reached across the table and turned her hand palm-up, the way he'd done in the restaurant on Dearborn, and neither of them said anything for a while.


The rain had started around four, and by six it had settled into a steady drum against the kitchen window. Marisol stood at the counter, slicing shallots, while Dev hunted through the cabinet above the refrigerator for the wine glasses they never used.

"Twelve years," he said, holding one up to the light. There was dust in the bowl. "Should I wash these, or does that ruin the vintage feel?"

"Wash them." She didn't look up. "And don't put them in the drying rack, they'll tip."

He ran the water hot and thought about the courthouse in Sacramento, the borrowed tie, her mother crying in the third row for reasons nobody could quite pin down. They'd planned nothing that day either. They'd eaten pho afterward because it was across the street.

"I got the bread from the place on Cortland," he said. "The guy remembered you."

"He remembers everyone."

"He remembered you specifically. He said, 'the one who argues about the sourdough.'"

Marisol laughed, and Dev felt the particular satisfaction of having earned it. He set the glasses on the table, then went back for the candles, which were in the drawer with the batteries and the tangled phone chargers, because that was the kind of house they kept.

The power flickered once while the chicken was in the oven. They both stopped and waited, and it held.

"If it goes out," she said, "we have the candles."

"We'd have to eat raw chicken."

"We'd order something. Or we'd eat bread."

They ate at seven, at the small table, with the rain still going. Dev poured the wine badly and spilled a little. Marisol reached over with her napkin without comment. Later, they left the dishes in the sink and sat on the couch, and she put her feet in his lap, and neither of them turned on the television.


The Twentieth

Rain had been coming down since four, which Dana decided was fine. Rain made the house feel smaller in a good way.

"I got the wrong kind of bread," Marcus said, holding up the bag like evidence. He'd stopped at the store on his way home from the clinic and come back with sourdough instead of the seeded rye.

"It's bread." Dana was at the stove, pushing garlic around in butter. "It'll be under the fish. Nobody's going to interview it."

He set the bag down and came up behind her, resting his chin briefly on her shoulder, then went to deal with the wine. The cork broke, as it always did with the cheap opener they refused to replace. He worked the rest of it out with a paring knife and poured two glasses with a few flakes of cork floating in them.

"Elegant," Dana said.

"Twenty years of elegance."

They had considered going out. There had been a whole conversation in February about Chicago, a hotel, the restaurant with the tasting menu. Then the transmission went on the Honda, and Dana's mother had her hip replaced, and somewhere in there the idea of driving three hours to eat foam had lost its appeal.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room had become a place where mail went to die. Marcus told her about the woman who'd brought in a cat named Beowulf. Dana told him she'd finally emailed the department chair about the sabbatical.

"You did?"

"This morning. Before I could talk myself out of it."

He put his hand over hers, briefly, and she turned it over so their palms met.

Afterward they didn't do dishes. They sat on the couch with the lamp on and the rain going, and Marcus fell asleep around ten, and Dana let him, and read another forty pages before she woke him up to come to bed.


The Fifteenth

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

She had the salmon out and the oven preheating when she heard his car. He came in with a paper bag held against his chest like something breakable.

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

"I went to Angelo's."

"We agreed no gifts."

"It's bread. Bread isn't a gift, it's an ingredient." He set the bag down and kissed the side of her head, then took over the asparagus without being asked, because she always undercooked it and he always overcooked it and somewhere in the negotiation they'd arrived at fifteen years.

They ate at the actual table instead of the couch. Dana had lit two candles from the junk drawer, mismatched, one of them vaguely cinnamon-scented, which clashed with the fish and neither of them mentioned.

"Do you remember what the officiant looked like?" she asked.

"Sort of a walrus situation."

"Mustache like a push broom."

"And he called you Diane."

"Twice." She refilled her wine. "I almost said something."

"You were too polite."

"I was too terrified."

Marcus laughed and reached over to take the last piece of bread, then split it and gave her half without looking, the way he'd done ten thousand times.

Afterward they didn't do anything special. They loaded the dishwasher together, argued mildly about whether bowls went on top, and ended up on the couch with an old movie neither of them watched. Dana fell asleep against his shoulder around ten-thirty. Marcus stayed awake another twenty minutes, mostly because he didn't want to move.


The Fifteenth

Renata found the candles in the back of the linen closet, wedged behind a stack of towels they never used. Beeswax, half-burned, from some dinner party years ago. She set them on the table anyway.

"You're not making the lasagna," Peter called from the kitchen. It wasn't a question. He had the oven open, checking on something.

"I made it last year. And the year before."

"That's tradition."

"That's a rut." She came in and leaned against the counter, watching him prod at a roasting chicken with a fork. Lemon and rosemary. He'd started cooking seriously three years ago, after the layoff, and had never stopped. "Since when do you truss?"

"Since I watched a video about it." He shut the oven. "Twenty minutes."

They had agreed, weeks ago, on no restaurant. No friends. Their daughter was at college in Ohio and had texted a photo of herself holding a handmade sign that said HAPPY 25 with a small heart, which Renata had immediately saved and Peter had immediately printed and stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like Wisconsin.

She poured the wine. He turned off the overhead light so the candles could do their work, and the kitchen went soft and orange, and the dishes in the sink disappeared into shadow.

"Do you remember what the priest said?" she asked.

"He said we'd fight."

"He said we'd fight *well*." She sat. "I don't think we've always done that."

Peter brought the chicken to the table and set it down between them. He was quiet a moment, hands still on the platter's edges.

"No," he agreed. "But we're better at it." He sat down across from her. "Fifteen more?"

Renata lifted her glass. Outside, a car went by, headlights sweeping the ceiling.

"Fifteen more," she said. "At least."


The Twenty-Fifth

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

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

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

"I went to Marconi's."

"We agreed. Nothing fancy."

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

"I did. Kevin sounded personally wounded."

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

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

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

"Carpet cleaner."

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

"He thought nobody knew."

"Everybody knew."

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

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


The Anniversary

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

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

"You're cooking," he said.

"You sound disappointed."

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

"We'll eat both."

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

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

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

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

"You got me Thai food."

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

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


The Twentieth

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

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

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

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

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

"They're fine. Trim them."

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

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

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

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

"What did you tell her?"

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

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

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

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

"You did not."

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

"I was moved."

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

"There's dessert?"

"There's ice cream."

"Then yes."


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

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

"What thing."

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

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

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

"Noted."

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

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

"My father thought you were a communist."

"I was a communist."

"You were a graduate student."

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

"To the radiator," she said finally.

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

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


The Fifteenth

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

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

"You beat me," he said.

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

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

"That's the one I like."

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

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

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

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

"Crystal."

"You looked it up too."

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

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

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


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

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

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

"You went to Fiorella's."

"I went to Fiorella's."

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

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

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

"That's not nothing," Marcus said.

"I didn't say it was nothing."

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


The Twentieth

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

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

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

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

"Diner food," she said.

"You want me to spill something on myself?"

"Only if it feels natural."

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

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

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

"You don't have to."

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

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


The Twenty-Fifth

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

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

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

"I didn't ask you to."

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

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

"I found the tape," Paul said.

"You did not."

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

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

"You look terrified," she said.

"I was terrified."

"Of what?"

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

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

"You didn't," she said.


The Anniversary

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

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

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

"You're early," he said.

"So are you."

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

"That's forty dollars."

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

"I'm *browning* the garlic."

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

"You didn't get it wrong."

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

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

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


The Twentieth

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

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

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

"That's not nothing," she said.

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

"I got out early."

"Then I'm making the rest."

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

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

"You said nothing," he said.

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

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


The Twentieth

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

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

"You cooked," he said.

"Don't sound so shocked."

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

"You can still claim it."

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

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

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

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

"We split the lasagna."

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

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

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

"Should we?" she said.

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

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


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

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

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

"You beat me," he said.

"Jerry let us out early. Slow Tuesday."

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

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

"That's the one I like."

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

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

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

"Ten years," Marisol said.

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

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

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

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


The Fifteenth

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

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

"The bridge," he said.

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

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

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

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

"My mother took it."

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

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

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

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

"That's a low bar."

"It isn't, actually."

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