Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still gritty with sand from their trip to the Outer Banks two summers ago. She shook it out over the trash can and set it on the bed.

"Do we need the cooler?" Devon called from the kitchen. He was standing with the refrigerator door open, holding a package of sliced turkey like evidence.

"For two days? We'll just stop somewhere."

"We always say that, and then we're eating gas station pretzels at nine at night."

She conceded the point. He packed the cooler with the turkey, a bag of baby carrots, two seltzers, and — because it was in the door and would go bad otherwise — half a jar of pickles.

The packing took longer than it should have. Maya couldn't decide about the hiking boots. The cabin listing had mentioned a trail, but it had also mentioned a wood stove and a hot tub with a broken jet, and she suspected they'd spend most of the weekend indoors reading. She brought the boots anyway. Devon spent eleven minutes looking for his phone charger before finding it plugged in behind the nightstand, where it lived.

They took turns carrying things down to the car. Devon backed the Corolla out to the end of the driveway while Maya locked the front door, tried the knob twice, then went back in for the thermostat, which she nudged down to sixty-two.

"Neighbor's watering the plants?" he asked as she got in.

"Tomorrow and Sunday. I texted her the code."

He pulled onto the street. At the stop sign he reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and she put her hand on top of it, and neither of them said anything about it.

Twenty minutes later, merging onto the interstate, Maya sat up straight.

"Did you turn off the coffee maker?"

Devon thought about it. "It shuts off by itself."

"Does it?"

"It has for four years."

She let it go, and the exits started counting down.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Dana slapped it quiet before it could wake Marcus. It didn't work. He groaned into the pillow and said, "You packed last night. Why are we up this early?"

"Because you didn't pack last night."

He sat up, hair flattened on one side, and admitted this was true.

The kitchen filled with the smell of coffee while Dana went through her mental list out loud: phone chargers, the good sunscreen, the paper map because the cabin sat in a dead zone where their phones would be useless. Marcus moved around her, opening drawers, holding up two flannel shirts as if asking her to choose. She chose the green one. He packed both.

"Did you email the neighbor about the mail?" he asked.

"Text. Yesterday. She's got the spare key."

They took turns in the bathroom. Dana watered the plants and wedged a folded index card under the wobbly one on the windowsill. Marcus carried the cooler down to the car and came back up for the bag of groceries — bread, coffee, eggs, a package of bacon, two bottles of wine wrapped in dish towels so they wouldn't clink.

The car took two tries to start, which it always did in the cold. Dana checked the stove twice. Marcus checked the front door twice after she'd already locked it, and she let him, because they'd been living together three years and this was simply how mornings worked now.

At six-forty they backed out of the driveway. The neighborhood was still blue-gray and empty, sprinklers hissing on somebody's lawn. Dana handed Marcus his travel mug and unfolded the map across her knees, though she knew the first two hours by heart.

"Two whole days," Marcus said, merging onto the highway.

"Forty-eight hours," she said, "and nobody knows where we are."

He laughed and turned the radio down, and they drove east into the sunrise.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still smelling faintly of last summer's lake trip. She dropped it on the bed and started making piles: two shirts, sandals, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March.

"Did you charge the camera battery?" she called.

Daniel appeared in the doorway with a coffee mug in one hand and his phone in the other, squinting at a weather app. "Charging. Sixty percent. It says rain Sunday morning, but only twenty percent chance."

"Twenty percent means it'll rain."

"Twenty percent means bring a jacket." He set the mug down on the dresser, then thought better of it and moved it to a coaster. They'd lived together fourteen months, long enough for him to learn which of her habits were worth adopting.

He handled the kitchen. Coffee beans, the good ones, in a mason jar. String cheese and apples for the drive, because they always meant to stop for a real lunch and never did. He texted their neighbor about the mail and left the porch light on a timer.

Maya rinsed the sink, watered the pothos, and unplugged the toaster. In the bathroom she debated the hair dryer, decided the rental probably had one, then packed it anyway.

They loaded the car at 7:40, later than planned, and Daniel wedged the duffel behind the passenger seat. Maya got in, buckled, and immediately unbuckled.

"Door," she said, already halfway out.

"You locked it. I watched you."

"I know. I still have to check."

She came back thirty seconds later and buckled again. Daniel backed out of the driveway, and she pulled up the playlist she'd been building all week, titled simply *two days*.

Somewhere past the second exit, the city thinned into fields, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five, but Danielle was already awake, listening to the refrigerator hum. She nudged Marcus, who groaned into the pillow and said he needed nine more minutes. He took twenty.

By the time he came downstairs, she had coffee in the travel mugs and the cooler packed with string cheese, grapes, and the leftover chicken salad neither of them wanted to throw out. Marcus dug through the hall closet for the good duffel bag, the one without the broken zipper, and found it behind the vacuum they kept meaning to return.

"Did you get the reservation confirmation?" he asked, holding up his phone.

"It's in my email. Room 214. They said check-in isn't until three."

He packed the way he always did, which was to say badly — three shirts, no socks — and she caught it, as she always did, dropping a rolled pair on top before he zipped it shut. He pretended not to notice. She pretended not to notice him noticing.

The cat needed her bowl filled and the automatic feeder tested twice. Marcus turned the thermostat up to seventy-eight. Danielle unplugged the toaster, then the coffee maker, then stood in the kitchen doorway doing the thing where she stared at the room until her brain confirmed nothing was on fire.

"We're fine," he said from the front hall.

"I know."

They loaded the car in the gray half-light. Marcus took the driver's seat first, agreeing without discussion that she'd take over after the halfway mark. Danielle plugged in her phone, scrolled to the playlist she'd built over the past week, and hit shuffle.

He backed down the driveway, stopped, and looked at her. "Front door?"

"Locked. I did it twice."

They pulled onto the empty street. Three blocks later she reached over and rested her hand on his knee, and neither of them said anything for a long while, which was the point of the whole trip.


The alarm went off at five, but Marisol had already been awake for twenty minutes, listening to the rain give up on itself outside their bedroom window. She nudged Devon's shoulder.

"It stopped," she said.

"Mmf." He rolled toward her, then squinted at the clock. "We said six."

"We said six and then you said you wanted to beat the traffic through Hartford."

That got him up. He padded to the kitchen in the gray dark and started coffee while she pulled the duffel from the closet shelf, where it had been sitting since a wedding in Ohio two Octobers ago. It smelled faintly of the inside of a car.

They packed the way they always did, which was to say badly and in parallel. Devon overpacked socks. Marisol forgot a toothbrush and remembered it twice, out loud, before actually putting one in the bag. He asked if she wanted the good hiking boots or the sneakers. She said the boots, then changed her mind, then put both in.

"Two days," he said. "It's two days."

"The forecast said forty percent."

At six-fifteen she watered the pothos and left the porch light on a timer. Devon carried the bag and the cooler out to the Civic and did the thing where he stood back and considered the trunk like a puzzle before shoving everything in sideways. Their neighbor's dog barked once and lost interest.

Marisol locked the door, checked it, checked it again, and got in. She handed him a thermos and took the aux cord because she had made a playlist and was not going to pretend she hadn't.

"Okay," Devon said, backing out of the driveway. The street was still shining.

"Okay," she said.

They turned onto the main road as the sky began to go the color of milk, and neither of them said much for the first ten miles, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five, and Dana slapped it quiet before it could wake Marcus. It didn't work. He groaned into the pillow and said, "We said six."

"You said six. I said five, because you take forty minutes in the shower."

They moved through the apartment in the half-dark, trading places in the bathroom, the kitchen, the narrow hallway where the duffel bags sat waiting. Dana had packed hers two nights ago, rolled and zipped and lined up by the door like a reproach. Marcus was still deciding between two flannel shirts, holding them up in the bedroom mirror while the coffee maker gurgled.

"It's a cabin," Dana called. "There's nobody there to see you."

"You'll see me."

"I've seen you in worse."

He took the gray one. In the kitchen he filled two travel mugs while Dana went through her list out loud: phone chargers, the good hiking socks, the bag of trail mix she'd assembled from bulk bins, the bottle of wine they'd been saving since his birthday. She'd written the neighbor's name on a sticky note along with instructions for the cat, and she stuck it to the fridge, then peeled it off and stuck it somewhere more obvious.

"Litter box," Marcus said.

"Scooped."

"Thermostat."

"Sixty-two."

They carried everything down two flights and loaded the trunk in the blue light, breath showing, the street quiet except for a garbage truck three blocks over. Marcus took the first shift driving because Dana had booked the place and read the reviews and printed the directions, which he found endearing and also unnecessary in the age of GPS.

At the corner she reached over and put her hand on his knee.

"Two whole days," she said.

"No laptops."

"You already packed yours."

He didn't deny it. He turned onto the highway, and the city thinned out behind them.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Delia hit it before the second chirp. Marcus was already awake, staring at the ceiling, doing the mental arithmetic he always did before a trip — gas, tolls, whether the cabin's owner had actually left the key under the flowerpot like he promised.

"Coffee's on a timer," Delia said, swinging her legs out of bed. "I set it last night while you were pretending to pack."

"I did pack."

"You put two shirts in a tote bag."

They moved around each other in the small bedroom with the easy choreography of four years of shared space. Marcus rolled socks. Delia checked the weather on her phone and announced that Saturday would be cold enough for the good jacket, so he dug it out of the hall closet, which meant relocating a box of Christmas lights they'd been meaning to deal with since January.

In the kitchen she cleared the fridge of anything that would turn — half a container of blueberries, a lonely yogurt — and ate the blueberries standing at the sink. Marcus filled the cat's bowls, then filled them again because their neighbor Yvonne, who had the spare key, tended to forget the water.

By six-forty the car was loaded: two duffels, a grocery bag of snacks, a thermos, the tote with the two shirts. Delia went back inside twice, once for her book and once because she couldn't remember whether she'd unplugged the iron.

"You didn't use the iron."

"I know. That's what's bothering me."

He waited in the driveway with the engine running, exhaust curling white in the dark. When she finally climbed in, she handed him the thermos and pulled the door shut against the cold.

"Okay," she said. "Go."

He backed out slowly, and they turned onto the empty street with the heater roaring and the whole gray morning still ahead of them.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on the night before and immediately regretted. Nolan was already up, standing in the kitchen in yesterday's t-shirt, pouring coffee into the dented travel mugs they'd bought at a gas station in Ohio two summers ago.

"I made the sandwiches," he said. "Turkey for you, no mustard."

"You remembered." She kissed his shoulder on her way to the closet, where her duffel sat half-packed and accusing. She'd laid out clothes for two days and somehow ended up with six shirts. Nolan's bag had been zipped since Thursday.

The apartment took longer to leave than the packing did. Dana went room to room unplugging things while Nolan wrestled the cooler down the outside stairs. The neighbor's dog barked at him the whole way, as it always did. When Dana came out she was carrying the houseplant that couldn't be trusted alone for forty-eight hours.

"It's two days," Nolan said.

"It's dramatic. It notices."

He took the pot from her and wedged it behind the passenger seat with a towel around the base.

They got on the highway by six-forty, later than planned, which was earlier than usual. The sun came up somewhere around the second exit, orange over a Wendy's sign, and Dana put her feet on the dashboard until Nolan gave her a look and she put them down.

"Cabin at eleven, if the check-in guy's honest," he said.

"And if he's not?"

"Then we sit by the lake and eat sandwiches at ten-thirty in the morning."

Dana found the playlist she'd made and pretended she hadn't spent an hour on it. Nolan pretended not to notice the first song was one he'd mentioned liking, once, in passing, in March. Somewhere past the county line the traffic thinned out, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was its own kind of talking.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a mouth waiting to be fed. Dana stood over it, holding two sweaters, trying to decide which one lied less about the weather forecast.

"It's supposed to be fifty-eight and raining," Marcus called from the bathroom, where he was excavating the medicine cabinet. "Take both."

"Then I have to take the bigger bag."

"So take the bigger bag."

She took both sweaters and the bigger bag. In the kitchen, she emptied the coffee pot and unplugged the toaster, a ritual her mother had drilled into her, and then stood for a moment in the quiet, listening to the refrigerator hum. Three years they'd lived in this apartment. She still checked the stove twice.

Marcus came out with a Ziploc of toothpaste, ibuprofen, and the contact solution he always forgot and then bought again at inflated prices in strange drugstores. He set it by the door and started hunting for the tire pressure gauge, which turned up in the junk drawer beneath a birthday candle and a takeout menu for a restaurant that had closed.

They loaded the car in two trips. The trunk latch stuck, as it always did, and Dana leaned on it with her hip while Marcus wedged the cooler in behind the seats. Their neighbor Ruth was on her porch with a cigarette and waved.

"Two days," Marcus told her. "Water the plant if you think of it."

"You don't have plants."

"That's why it works out."

Dana pulled the door shut, tested the knob, and tested it again. Then she got in the passenger seat and set the coffee thermos in the cup holder while Marcus adjusted the mirror he never had to adjust.

"Music or podcast?"

"Music till the highway."

He backed out slowly, both of them checking the same blind spot, and the apartment shrank behind them into just another window in a row of windows.


Marisol found the duffel bag on the top shelf of the hall closet, right where Dev had shoved it after their last trip. It still smelled faintly of the campground in Ohio, woodsmoke and something vaguely like wet dog, though neither of them owned a dog.

"Two nights," she called toward the bedroom. "You don't need four shirts."

"I need four shirts," Dev said, appearing in the doorway with exactly four shirts folded over his arm. "One for driving, one for dinner, one for the hike, one in case something happens to the others."

"What's going to happen to them?"

"That's the point. I don't know."

She let it go. He had a system, and arguing with the system had never once worked in three years of sharing an address. Instead she went through the kitchen, throwing out the half-lemon and the milk that would turn while they were gone, wedging the coffee grounds into the freezer. Dev came behind her and unplugged the toaster, the way his mother always had.

They fought briefly about the cooler — whether it was worth bringing for a two-hour drive — and settled it by bringing the cooler with only water and two sandwiches in it, which satisfied nobody. Marisol texted their neighbor about the mail. Dev checked the weather three times and reported it identically each time.

At ten forty, they stood in the living room, keys in hand, doing the last sweep. Stove off. Windows latched. Thermostat down to sixty. The apartment already had that suspended, held-breath quality of a place about to be empty.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Bathroom first," he said, and she laughed, because of course.

Then they were down the stairs and out into the gray October light, the duffel between them in the back seat, the cooler sweating on the floor. Dev drove. Marisol found a station that came in clear for the first thirty miles, and they didn't talk much, which was fine.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the winter coats they hadn't touched since March. She dragged it out and dropped it on the bed, where Deshawn was already folding two shirts with the meticulousness he applied to everything except the kitchen sink.

"Two days," he said. "You don't need four pairs of shoes."

"I need two pairs of shoes. The others are for you to trip over so you feel at home."

They'd rented the cabin on a whim, a Tuesday-night decision made over reheated pad thai, mostly because Maya's sister had sent a link and Deshawn had said *why not* before he could talk himself out of it. Now it was Friday morning, and the coffee maker was gurgling its last, and the whole apartment had the strange charged quiet of a place about to be left alone.

He handled the cooler. Sandwiches, a six-pack, the good mustard, a bag of ice from the gas station they'd stop at anyway. She handled the thermostat, the plants, the note for their neighbor Ruth about the mail. Twice she went back inside — once for her phone charger, once for the paperback she'd been failing to finish since spring.

"Did you lock the balcony door?"

"I locked the balcony door."

"Did you actually, or are you saying that so we can leave?"

Deshawn set down the cooler, went upstairs, and came back thirty seconds later. "It was locked."

"Okay."

"But I'm glad I checked."

The car smelled like the pine air freshener he kept meaning to replace. Maya took the passenger seat and immediately began arguing with the aux cord. Deshawn backed out slowly, past Ruth's hedges, past the dumpsters, and paused at the mouth of the parking lot.

"Left?"

"Right, then the highway."

He turned right. She got the music working somewhere around the second traffic light, and neither of them said much for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five, and Maya slapped it quiet before Danny could stir. She was the early one, always had been, even on vacation days. By the time he shuffled into the kitchen in yesterday's t-shirt, she had coffee going and was standing over the counter with a list.

"We don't need a list for two days," he said.

"We forgot a phone charger last time and had to buy one at a gas station for nineteen dollars."

He conceded the point and started pulling things from the fridge—the half carton of eggs, the cheese that would go bad, the leftover pad thai. They'd learned this the hard way too, coming home in August to something that had liquefied in the crisper.

Maya packed for both of them because Danny packed like a man fleeing a fire. She rolled his jeans, counted socks, tucked in the sweatshirt he'd want at the cabin at night and would swear he didn't need. Danny handled the car: tire pressure, the cooler, the two bags of ice from the corner store, the box of granola bars he bought every single trip and never ate.

At seven-thirty, the neighbor's kid came for the cat. Maya walked her through the feeding schedule twice while Danny loaded the trunk, then unloaded and reloaded it so the cooler wasn't crushing the duffel.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"You locked it."

"Did I?"

They both went and checked. It was locked.

In the car, Danny handed her the aux cord without being asked, which was, she thought, a small daily proof of something. The GPS said three hours and twelve minutes. The sun was still low and orange over the strip malls, and the coffee was too hot, and neither of them minded.

"Okay," Maya said, buckling in. "Go."

He backed out of the driveway slow, checking twice for the neighbor's dog, and turned toward the highway.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the winter coats, still holding a receipt from their trip to Asheville two summers ago. She carried it into the bedroom, where Dev was standing over the bed folding shirts with the deliberate slowness of someone who had already checked the weather three times.

"Sixty-one and rain Saturday," he said. "Forty percent."

"You said thirty this morning."

"It went up."

She unzipped the bag and started stuffing socks into the corners. They'd rented a cabin two hours north, a place with a woodstove and no cell service, booked back in January when February had felt survivable only if there was something on the other side of it. Now it was March and the trip had arrived the way things do, suddenly and with laundry undone.

Dev went to unplug the coffee maker and came back with two granola bars and a bag of pretzels. Maya was pulling the plug on the space heater, then the lamp, then checking the stove knobs, then checking them again while he watched, amused, from the doorway.

"It's off."

"I know it's off. I need to have seen it be off."

They left the porch light on for the neighbor, who had agreed to feed the cat. The cat, sensing betrayal, sat in the window and stared.

The car was cold. Dev drove because Maya hated merging onto the interstate, and she took the aux cord because he had bad taste and knew it. They stopped at the gas station on Fulton for a full tank and a large coffee she immediately regretted ordering.

Twenty minutes out, she said, "Did you bring the corkscrew?"

He tapped the console. She looked. It was there.

The city thinned into strip malls, then trees. She put her feet on the dashboard, and he didn't tell her not to.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and now regretted. She lay still for a moment, listening to the radiator tick, then nudged Marcus with her foot.

"You said you'd get up first," she said.

"I said I'd *try*."

They moved through the apartment in the half-dark, trading places in the bathroom, bumping shoulders in the narrow hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. Marcus made coffee in the travel mugs while Dana went through her list out loud: phone chargers, the good rain jacket, the cooler, the printed confirmation for the cabin because there'd be no service past the county line.

"You already said chargers."

"I'm saying it again because you never bring yours."

He held up his charger without turning around.

The bag situation took longer than it should have. Dana had packed the night before, neatly, a single duffel by the door. Marcus was still deciding about boots at six-fifteen, standing in the closet with one in each hand like he was weighing them.

"It's two days," she said.

"It's two days in the woods."

"Bring the brown ones."

He brought the brown ones.

They took her car because his had a check-engine light he'd been ignoring since October. Marcus loaded the trunk, wedging the cooler behind the duffels, and Dana went back up for the thermostat, then came back down and went up again for the bag of oranges she'd left on the counter. Their neighbor's dog barked at them both times.

By seven they were on the highway with the sun coming up gray and pink over the exit signs. Marcus fiddled with the radio until she told him to pick something. He picked something. She reached over without looking and put her hand on his knee, and they drove.


Marisol found the cooler in the garage behind a stack of paint cans, and she hauled it inside while Devon dug through the hall closet for the sleeping bags they hadn't touched since October. They had exactly one day off overlapping, plus the Saturday, and they'd decided at two in the morning last week that they were going to use it.

"Do we need the tent?" he called.

"It's a cabin. There's a bed."

"There's a bed listed. There was a hot tub listed at that place in Asheville, too."

She laughed and told him to bring the tent.

The kitchen filled with the smell of coffee while she made sandwiches, cutting them diagonally because he liked them that way and pretended not to care. Devon carried out the duffel bags, came back for the cooler, went out again with the grocery bag of pretzels and apples and the four beers left from a six-pack. On his third trip he stopped in the doorway and asked whether she'd texted the neighbor about the cat.

She had. Mrs. Alvarez had the spare key and strong opinions about wet food.

At ten forty they were nearly out the door when Marisol went back for the phone charger, and then Devon went back for his sunglasses, and then they both stood in the living room for a second, scanning, the way people do when they're sure they've forgotten something and can't name it.

"Stove's off," she said.

"Checked it twice."

In the car, he backed out of the driveway while she scrolled for the playlist they'd argued about on Wednesday. The cat watched from the front window, unbothered. Two blocks down, at the light by the pharmacy, Marisol put her hand on his knee and said they should do this more often, and Devon said yes, absolutely, knowing they probably wouldn't, and merged onto the highway heading north.


The alarm went off at five, and Nadia hit it before the second chirp. Beside her, Theo groaned into the pillow.

"You said you'd be up first," she reminded him, already pulling on jeans.

"I said I'd try."

They had two days. Two whole days, carved out of a spring that had been nothing but overtime for her and a leaking water heater for him. A cabin outside Asheville, booked back in February when the idea still felt theoretical.

Theo made coffee while Nadia went through the checklist she'd taped to the fridge. Phone chargers. The good hiking socks. The thermos that never quite stopped smelling like tomato soup. She crossed items off with a golf pencil.

"Did you turn the water off to the washer?" she called.

"Doing it now." He was on his knees behind the machine, reaching for the valves, his coffee cooling on the dryer. When he stood up, his knee popped audibly.

"You're thirty-four."

"I'm aware."

They argued mildly about the cooler—she wanted to pack sandwiches, he wanted to stop somewhere in Tennessee—and settled on sandwiches plus the option of stopping anyway. Theo carried the bags out. Nadia texted their neighbor Rosalind about the mail and left a note on the counter, though she wasn't sure who it was for.

At six-forty they backed out of the driveway. The neighborhood was gray and quiet, sprinklers going on someone's lawn.

"Wait." Nadia touched his arm.

Theo stopped the car halfway down the block. "The stove?"

"The stove."

He waited while she jogged back, unlocked the door, checked all four burners and the oven, and locked up again. She got in breathing a little hard.

"Off?"

"Off."

"You want to be the one who checks next time?"

"No," she said, buckling in. "I want you to check and then let me check after you."

He pulled onto the main road, and the light changed just as they reached it, green the whole way.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still smelling faintly of the beach trip they'd taken in June. She dragged it out and set it on the bed while Dane stood in front of the open dresser, holding up two flannel shirts.

"It's supposed to be fifty-five and raining," she said.

"So both."

"So both," she agreed.

They had rented a cabin two hours north, one of those places with a woodstove and a questionable hot tub, and they'd been talking about it since August. Now it was the second Friday in October and the leaves had finally turned, and Dane had put in for a half day.

He packed the car while Maya went through the house doing what she called the sweep: thermostat down to sixty, coffee maker unplugged, the little dish of water for the cat that their neighbor Rosalie would refill on Saturday morning. Maya left a note on the counter with Rosalie's name on it and three exclamation points.

"Did you get the good pillow?" Dane called from the driveway.

"It's in the back seat."

"That's not what I asked."

She laughed and went to get it.

By two thirty they were rolling down the block, past the mailboxes and the house where somebody was always rebuilding a motorcycle. Dane drove. Maya put her socked feet on the dash, and he looked at them, and didn't say anything, which was its own kind of comment.

The gas station on Route 9 had the good hot dogs, so they stopped, and Maya bought a bag of sour candy and a bottle of iced tea and Dane got coffee that he admitted was terrible after the first sip.

Then the highway opened up, the hills went gold and rust on either side, and Maya scrolled through her phone looking for a playlist that would last them the rest of the way.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and Marcus had argued against, and now she was the one still under the covers while he stood in the doorway with coffee.

"You wanted this," he said.

"I wanted the idea of this."

They had rented a cabin two hours north, a small place with a wood stove and questionable cell service, for Friday and Saturday nights. It was the first trip they'd taken since moving in together in March, and the apartment still had a boxes-in-the-corner quality that made leaving feel slightly irresponsible.

Dana packed while Marcus loaded the car. She was a folder; he was a stuffer. She put his flannel shirts in the duffel and then took two out because he never wore more than one. In the kitchen she filled a paper bag with things that would go bad otherwise—half a rotisserie chicken, grapes, a heel of bread, the good mustard.

Marcus came back in for the cooler and found the freezer packs still in the freezer, which he'd forgotten to move to the counter, which was fine, because they were frozen and that was the point. He said this out loud to no one and felt clever.

They argued briefly about whether to bring the space heater. They brought it.

At seven-forty they stood in the hallway doing the last check: stove off, windows locked, the timer on the lamp set so the place wouldn't look empty. Dana texted her sister the address of the cabin, the way she always did. Marcus watered the fern.

In the car, she took the aux cord without asking and he let her. They stopped at the gas station on Route 9 for ice and a bad breakfast sandwich each. He drove the first hour. She fell asleep before the highway, her head against the window, and he turned the music down without changing the song.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Nadia hit it before the second chirp. Beside her, Owen groaned into his pillow and said something that might have been "coffee."

She started the pot while he showered, then stood in the kitchen doing mental inventory. Two nights, so two changes of clothes each, plus the good jacket in case the restaurant in Asheville turned out to be nicer than the website suggested. She'd packed the night before. Owen had not.

"Do you need the gray sweater?" she called down the hall.

"Which gray sweater?"

"The one you always wear."

"That's most of them."

He emerged with wet hair, dropped a duffel on the bed, and began the process she'd watched a dozen times: two shirts in, one shirt out, socks balled and thrown from across the room like free throws. He made four out of five. Nadia retrieved the fifth from behind the nightstand and tucked it in.

They divided the rest of the morning without discussing it. He hauled bags to the Subaru and checked the tire pressure with the little gauge his father had given him. She emptied the fridge of anything that would turn, wrote a note for Kelsey next door about the cat, and left the spare key under the ceramic frog. Owen came back inside for the phone charger. Then for his sunglasses. Then, sheepishly, for his wallet.

"That's three trips," Nadia said.

"That's a personal best."

At 7:12 they pulled out of the driveway. She had the printed directions on her knee, because he liked paper, and a bag of pretzels wedged between the seats. Two blocks in, he reached over and put his hand on her thigh, and she put hers on top of it, and neither of them said anything for a while. The sun came up somewhere near the interstate.


Maya had made the list on Sunday, taped it to the refrigerator, and by Thursday night it was covered in Dev's additions, written in the cramped handwriting she'd once described as "seismograph."

"Sunscreen isn't on here," he said, dropping a bottle into the duffel bag open on their bed.

"It's October."

"It's Arizona."

She conceded the point. They were driving to Sedona for two nights, leaving Friday after Dev's last meeting, and the whole thing had been planned around a single free weekend that had appeared in their calendars like a clearing in the woods. Neither of them entirely trusted it.

Maya packed the way she did everything, in categories: shirts folded, then pants, then the small zippered pouch of medications and hair ties. Dev packed the way he did everything, which was to say he stood in front of the closet holding two nearly identical flannel shirts, deliberating.

"Bring both," she said, not looking up.

"That's excessive."

"Then bring one."

He brought both.

Downstairs, they went through the ritual of leaving: thermostat set to seventy-eight, dishwasher run, the sad little plant on the windowsill watered generously in apology. Their neighbor Tricia had a key and had agreed to take the mail. Dev texted her a photo of the counter where he'd left a bottle of wine.

The car took three trips to load, mostly because Maya kept remembering things. Phone charger. The good travel mug. A paperback she'd been meaning to start since March.

At 4:40, Dev backed out of the driveway while Maya connected her phone to the stereo. The house shrank in the rearview mirror, unremarkable and beige and theirs, more or less, for another fourteen months of lease.

"Did we lock the back door?" she asked, three blocks in.

He was already turning around. She laughed, and he did too, and the second departure felt easier than the first.


The alarm went off at five, and Maya slapped it quiet before Devon could stir. She'd packed her bag the night before, which she felt smug about until she remembered the phone charger still plugged in behind the nightstand.

Devon came into the kitchen barefoot, hair flattened on one side, and started the coffee without being asked. That was the thing about four years of sharing a lease — you learned who did what. He filled the thermos. She loaded the cooler with the sandwiches they'd assembled at eleven the night before, turkey for him, hummus and roasted red pepper for her, both wrapped in wax paper because Devon insisted foil made bread sweat.

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

"She's coming Saturday morning. I left the food scoop on the counter with a note."

They did a last circuit of the apartment together, a ritual neither of them would admit to enjoying. Stove off. Windows latched. Thermostat down to sixty-two. Devon unplugged the toaster, which Maya thought was excessive, and Maya double-checked the bathroom for her contact solution, which Devon thought was excessive, and they said nothing about either.

Loading the car took two trips. The duffel bags went in the trunk, the cooler behind the passenger seat where Maya could reach it, and Devon's guitar — brought every trip, played on maybe one in five — wedged in at an angle.

The sun was coming up gray and pink over the rooftops when he backed out of the space. Maya was already scrolling for the playlist she'd made and then abandoned two weeks ago.

"Gas first," Devon said. "Then the highway."

"Then the highway," she agreed, and rolled her window down two inches, and let the cold morning air come in against her face while the neighborhood slid past and thinned out into open road.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, behind the winter coats they hadn't touched since March. It smelled faintly of the beach trip they'd taken two summers ago, before Dev moved in, when they were still splitting the gas money out of politeness.

"Two nights or one?" she called.

"Two." Dev was in the kitchen, filling a thermos he'd bought specifically for this, a purchase Marisol had teased him about for a full week. "Friday and Saturday. We're back Sunday afternoon."

She packed the way she always did, which was to say badly — three shirts for two days, the wrong shoes, a paperback she wouldn't open. Dev packed the way he always did, which was to say in a manner she found faintly infuriating: everything rolled, a separate pouch for chargers, a printed confirmation for the cabin because the reception up there was unreliable and he didn't trust his phone to hold a PDF hostage.

They argued mildly about the cooler. She thought it was overkill for a place with a refrigerator. He pointed out that the nearest grocery store was twenty-two minutes away, and she conceded, because he'd looked it up and she hadn't.

At ten past nine, Marisol went through the apartment doing the ritual: coffee maker off, windows latched, the small lamp by the couch on a timer so it looked like someone was home. Dev carried the bags down two flights and wedged them into the trunk beside the cooler and a bag of oranges neither of them remembered buying.

She locked the door. He started the car. When she got in, the heat was already running and he'd cued up the playlist she'd made and then forgotten about.

"Okay," she said, pulling the seatbelt across.

"Okay," he said, and backed out of the space, and they went.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and Marcus had argued against, and now that it was ringing they both regretted it equally.

"I told you," he mumbled into the pillow.

"You'll thank me when we're not sitting in traffic outside Hartford."

They had rented a cabin in the Berkshires for two nights, a small place with a woodstove and no cell service, which was either the point or the problem depending on which of them you asked. Dana had booked it in February, back when March had felt impossibly far away.

She made coffee while Marcus loaded the car, carrying out the duffel bags and the cooler and the paper grocery sack of things they'd bought the night before—coffee filters, a box of pasta, two bottles of wine, a bag of oranges that seemed important at the store and now seemed excessive. He came back in with cold hands and put them on the back of her neck, and she yelped and elbowed him without much force.

"Did you get the charger?"

"Which one?"

"The white one, on my side of the bed."

He went and got it.

They took turns in the bathroom. Dana emptied the coffee maker and unplugged the toaster and checked the stove twice. Marcus stood in the doorway of the apartment holding his keys, watching her go from room to room in her jacket already, and he didn't say anything about it, because after four years he had learned which things were worth saying and which things were just weather.

The neighbor's dog barked once as they came down the stairs. It was still dark, a blue kind of dark, and the windshield had a thin skin of frost that Marcus scraped while Dana sat inside with her hands in her sleeves.

"Okay," she said, when he got in.

"Okay," he said, and pulled out onto the empty street.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. She dragged it out and sneezed.

"It smells like the closet," she called.

Dev looked up from the kitchen table, where he was printing directions he didn't need because he liked having paper. "Air it out on the porch. We've got time."

They didn't, really. Check-in at the cabin in the Poconos was at four, and it was already past eleven. But Dev had a way of saying things that made time feel negotiable, and Marisol had learned in three years of sharing a lease with him that arguing about it only cost more minutes.

She packed for both of them, because he'd asked her to once and she'd never stopped. Two pairs of jeans, his gray sweater with the hole in the elbow, her boots. He handled the food: a cooler with eggs, bacon, a six-pack, a bag of coffee, and — after some deliberation at the counter — the good chocolate from the back of the pantry.

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

"It's two days, Mari."

"My mother always turned off the water heater."

He went and turned off the water heater.

At twelve forty she stood in the doorway with her hand on the light switch, doing the last sweep — stove off, windows latched, litter box scooped, the neighbor's key on the counter for the cat. Dev was already in the car with the engine running, one arm out the window, tapping the door.

She locked up. Outside, the October air had that dry, papery smell. She got in, buckled, and put her feet on the dashboard the way he pretended to hate.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

He pulled out of the driveway, and she reached over and turned the radio down so they could talk.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Maya slapped it silent before it could wake Dev, who had somehow slept through her packing the night before. He was awake anyway, staring at the ceiling.

"I couldn't find the cooler," he said.

"It's behind the recycling bins. You put it there in September."

He padded downstairs in the dark. Maya heard the back door, then the sound of him swearing softly at something in the garage. She used the time to add a second sweater to her bag. The forecast said forty-eight degrees on the coast, and she never believed forecasts.

By six-fifteen the kitchen smelled like coffee and the burnt edge of a bagel. Dev had the cooler open on the counter, loading it with the leftover chicken, two beers, a container of cut cantaloupe that had been in the fridge since Sunday.

"That melon's turning," Maya said.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. Smell it."

He smelled it and dumped it in the trash without further comment, which was, she thought, the closest thing to an apology she'd get before eight a.m.

They argued briefly about whether to take his car or hers. His had the better gas mileage; hers had a working aux cord. The aux cord won. Dev carried the bags out while Maya went through the house doing what he called her "ritual" — checking the stove knobs twice, unplugging the toaster, texting their neighbor Priya about the mail, setting the thermostat to sixty.

"Litter box," Dev said from the doorway.

"Already scooped. Priya's coming Saturday morning."

The cat watched them from the stair landing, unbothered.

At six-fifty they backed out of the driveway. Maya plugged in her phone and put on the playlist she'd made two weeks ago, when the trip was still just an idea. Dev merged onto the highway, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and Marcus had argued against, and now she was the one who hit snooze twice while he stood in the kitchen doorway holding two mugs.

"I made the good coffee," he said. "The Ethiopian one your sister sent."

"That's manipulation."

"That's hospitality."

They'd rented a cabin outside Asheville, two nights, a place with a woodstove and questionable cell service. Dana had booked it in February during a bad week at work, and now it was April and the bad week had turned into a bad quarter, and she needed the mountains more than she'd expected to.

Packing went the way it always did. Marcus brought one duffel and was done in nine minutes. Dana laid three sweaters on the bed and stared at them like they'd wronged her.

"It's going to be fifty at night," he offered.

"I know what fifty feels like." She packed all three.

He carried the bags down while she went back twice—once for her charger, once because she couldn't remember whether she'd turned off the bathroom faucet. She had. Their neighbor Renata was already outside with her dog, and Marcus handed her the spare key and the note about the plants.

"Two days," Renata said. "You can't kill a pothos in two days."

"You'd be surprised what she can kill," Marcus said, and Dana elbowed him hard enough that he spilled coffee on his shoe.

In the car, she took the aux cord without asking, which was the arrangement they'd settled into years ago. He merged onto the highway with the sun still low behind them, and she put her bare feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it.

"Four hours," he said.

"Four and a half. You always forget the gas stop."

"I don't forget it. I just don't announce it."

She turned up the music. The city thinned out behind them.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. It smelled faintly of the beach trip they'd taken in June.

"Do we need the cooler?" Danny called from the kitchen. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator, holding a bag of baby carrots and looking at it like it had personally disappointed him.

"It's two nights. There's a diner right by the cabin."

"Yeah, but coffee. I'm not paying six dollars for coffee."

She let him win that one. He packed the cooler with cold brew, half a block of cheddar, the carrots, and a sleeve of crackers, which struck her as a strange combination but she'd stopped asking questions about his snack logic sometime around year two.

The apartment had a checklist quality to it now. She unplugged the toaster. He took the trash down to the bins in the alley and came back with the mail, which he set on the counter without opening. She watered the pothos on the windowsill and gave the fern a skeptical look, deciding it would survive or it wouldn't.

"Did you text your mom?" he asked, lacing his boots by the door.

"I told her Thursday. She wants pictures of the leaves."

"There won't be leaves. It's April."

"Then she'll get pictures of branches."

The car was parked two blocks down, and they carried the bags out together, Danny with the cooler banging against his knee, Marisol with the duffel and a tote of books she knew she wouldn't finish. It took three tries to fit everything in the trunk. He got in on the driver's side, adjusted the mirror she'd moved the week before, and handed her his phone.

"Directions," he said.

She pulled up the address, and they merged onto the highway a little after nine, the city thinning out behind them.


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

"I'll make coffee," Dani finally said, swinging her legs out from under the quilt. "You get the bags."

Marcus grunted something affirmative into his pillow. By the time he made it to the kitchen, hair flattened on one side, she had two travel mugs on the counter and was scrolling through her phone.

"Rain until noon in the mountains," she said. "Then clearing."

"So we hike after lunch."

"So we hike after lunch."

They'd bought the cabin nights back in February, a two-day thing, cheap because it was midweek. The plan had survived a canceled shift, a broken water heater, and Dani's sister's brief engagement crisis. Now it was actually happening.

Marcus loaded the duffel bags into the trunk while Dani watered the plants and checked the stove twice. She'd left a note for their neighbor Rosalind about the mail, and a second note about the cat, who was staying home with a timed feeder and an air of profound betrayal.

"Did you get my boots?" she called from the porch.

"They're in the back. Both of them."

"Both is important."

She locked the front door, tried it, then tried it again. Marcus was already in the passenger seat with the aux cord in his hand, which meant he'd claimed navigation and music for the first leg.

"You're driving first," he said.

"I know I'm driving first. I always drive first."

"You like driving first."

She did. She backed out of the driveway at twenty past six, the street still gray and quiet, one dog barking somewhere behind a fence. At the stop sign she looked over at him — sunglasses on, though the sun wasn't up, coffee balanced on his knee — and felt the particular lightness of leaving.

"Two days," she said.

"Two whole days."

She turned onto the highway.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation. Dana kept adding things—a second sweater, the good sandals, a paperback she wouldn't read—and Miles kept quietly removing them when she went to the bathroom.

"I saw that," she said, coming back with her toothbrush.

"It's two days. Forty-eight hours. You packed for a coronation."

"It's cold at night up there." She put the sweater back. He let it stay.

They'd rented a cabin near Big Bear because it was the only place within four hours that had a vacancy on Labor Day weekend, and because Miles had said, in June, that they never went anywhere, and Dana had held onto that the way she held onto most things he said offhandedly. The reservation confirmation had been sitting in her inbox for eleven weeks.

Downstairs, Miles filled the cooler—ice, a six-pack, the leftover pasta salad from Tuesday, cheese, the bread with the seeds she liked. Dana watered the ferns and left a note for the neighbor about the mail, though the neighbor already knew, because Dana had told her twice.

"Did you turn off the coffee maker?"

"You watched me do it."

"I know. I'm asking anyway."

He carried the bag out first, then came back for the cooler while she stood in the doorway with her keys, doing the thing she did—phone, wallet, charger, phone again—her mouth moving slightly. The car ticked in the driveway, already warm from the sun.

They pulled onto the street at 9:40, twenty minutes later than planned, which was earlier than either of them expected. Dana connected her phone to the stereo and put on something from a playlist she'd made three days ago and titled, without irony, *Road*.

At the stop sign, Miles reached over and put his hand on her knee, briefly, then took it back to shift.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, good."


Marisol found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, under a pile of winter coats they hadn't touched since March. She dragged it out and dropped it on the bed, where Teddy was already folding shirts into thirds like his mother had taught him.

"Two days," he said. "You don't need four dresses."

"I need options." She held one up, considered it, put it back. "It might rain."

They'd been living in the same apartment in Fort Collins for three years, long enough that Teddy knew the argument was performance, not conflict. He went to check the coffee maker while she packed, then came back with two mugs and set hers on the dresser where she'd forget it.

The plan was modest: a cabin outside Estes Park, someone's cousin's place, cheap in October. They had a cooler with sandwiches Marisol had made at eleven the night before, wrapped in wax paper, and a bag of pretzels Teddy insisted on because he got carsick without something salty.

At nine forty they were still not gone. Marisol couldn't find her hiking boots. Teddy found them on the balcony, where she'd left them to dry after the muddy trail in September.

"You're welcome," he said.

"I would have found them."

He carried the cooler down two flights while she locked up, checked the stove twice, then went back in to check it a third time. The neighbor's dog barked at them through the window as they loaded the trunk.

In the car, Marisol pulled her feet up onto the seat and unfolded the printed directions she'd insisted on, because the reception went out past Lyons.

"Ready?" Teddy asked.

She reached over and turned the radio down instead of answering, which meant yes. He backed out of the space, and the apartment building shrank in the mirror, and neither of them said anything for the first ten miles.


Marisol found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, behind a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to storing properly. She dragged it out and dropped it on the bed.

"Two nights," Dev called from the bathroom. "Two nights, Mari. You don't need four sweaters."

"It's the coast in October." She folded a fifth one anyway, then reconsidered and put two back in the drawer. "Did you print the reservation?"

"It's on my phone."

"And if your phone dies?"

He appeared in the doorway with his toothbrush in his mouth, gave her a look, and went back to the sink. A minute later she heard the printer in the second bedroom whir to life.

They'd rented the cottage in July, when the summer had felt endless and a fall trip seemed like a reasonable, adult thing to plan. Now the drive was three hours and it was already ten in the morning. Dev loaded the cooler—string cheese, two apples, a sleeve of crackers, the seltzers Marisol liked—while she went around unplugging things and checking the stove knobs twice, the way her mother always had.

"Thermostat," she said.

"Sixty-two. Already did it."

She texted their neighbor Cheryl about the mail, got a thumbs-up in return, and stood a second in the quiet kitchen, feeling that particular lightness of a house about to be empty.

Dev carried the duffel out. The car was old but clean, and he'd filled the tank the night before without being asked, which she noticed and decided to mention later, when it would land better.

She locked the front door, tried the handle, tried it again.

"It's locked," he said from the driver's seat.

"I know it's locked."

She got in. He backed down the driveway, and she put her feet on the dash, and neither of them said anything for the first ten miles.


Marisol found the duffel bag on the top shelf of the hall closet, where it had been since their last trip, still holding a paper coffee sleeve from a gas station in Pennsylvania. She shook it out over the trash can and set it on the bed.

"Two nights or one?" Dev called from the bathroom.

"One. We leave Friday, we're back Sunday morning." She counted shirts anyway and put in an extra. "Bring the good rain jacket. The forecast said forty percent Saturday."

"Forty percent means it won't rain."

"Forty percent means you'll complain."

He came out with the toiletry bag, holding it upside down to prove he'd remembered his contact solution, then set it in the duffel and went back for the phone chargers. Marisol pulled the sheets straight and stacked the pillows the way she liked to find them, then went downstairs to deal with the refrigerator—half a container of rice, a cucumber going soft, milk that would be fine. She texted their neighbor Rosalie about the mail.

Dev carried the bag out to the car at four fifteen. He checked the tire pressure light, which had been on since October, and decided it could wait. Marisol locked the back door, then the front, then stood on the porch and asked if he'd shut off the coffee maker.

"It shuts itself off."

"Did you check?"

He went back in and checked. It was off.

Traffic on the interstate was already thickening, red lights strung out ahead of them like something festive. Marisol put her feet on the dash until Dev gave her a look, then put them down. She found a station playing something from the nineties, and he turned it up two notches without saying anything.

Around exit nineteen, she reached over and put her hand on the back of his neck, and left it there for a while.


Maya found the duffel bag under the bed, exactly where Theo swore he'd left it three months ago after the Asheville trip. It smelled faintly of campfire.

"We're not camping," she called down the hallway. "It's a bed and breakfast. There's a claw-foot tub."

Theo appeared in the doorway holding two pairs of hiking boots, which answered nothing. "There's a trail behind the property. Four miles, mostly flat."

"Mostly."

"Bring the sneakers if you want to be like that."

She brought the sneakers. She also brought the boots, because she knew herself, and she knew that on Saturday morning she'd want to see the waterfall he'd been describing since October.

They packed the way they always did — Maya making a list on the back of an envelope, Theo insisting he didn't need one and then borrowing hers. Toothbrushes. The phone chargers, both of them, because his cable had frayed. A bottle of wine wrapped in a sweater. The book she'd been reading for six weeks and would not open once.

At eleven, Theo went out to start the car and came back in for the ice scraper, then again for his sunglasses. Maya emptied the coffee pot, checked the stove twice, and set the thermostat to sixty-two. Their neighbor's cat, who did not live with them but behaved as though he did, watched from the porch rail.

"Did you text your mom?" Theo asked.

"I texted her. She wants pictures of the tub."

The car doors thunked shut. Theo pulled out of the driveway and stopped at the end of the block. "Left or right?"

"You've driven this a hundred times."

"I like asking."

"Left."

He turned left. Maya put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which was its own kind of gift. The house shrank in the mirror. Two days felt, for a moment, like an enormous amount of time.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Nora hit it before the second beep. Beside her, Devon groaned into his pillow and said something that might have been "coffee."

She made it while he showered. Their kitchen was small enough that she could reach the mugs, the filters, and the fridge without moving her feet much, which she'd complained about when they signed the lease two years ago and had since decided she liked. She poured his into the dented travel thermos and left it on the counter where he'd trip over it if he didn't see it.

"Did you pack the charger?" he called.

"Which one?"

"The car one. The one that actually works."

She hadn't. She found it under a pile of mail on the entry table, next to the parking pass they'd meant to return in March.

By six-fifteen they were doing the last walk-through. Devon checked the stove twice, then a third time, which Nora had learned not to comment on. She watered the pothos and set the thermostat to sixty-eight and texted their neighbor Beth, who had a key and had agreed to check on things Sunday in exchange for a bottle of something from the tasting room.

The bags went in the trunk. Devon's duffel, her weekend bag, a canvas tote of snacks she'd assembled at eleven the night before: pretzels, two apples, a bag of gummy worms he pretended not to want.

"You driving first?" he asked.

"I'll drive first."

He put his seat back and cued up the playlist he'd been building all week and had refused to let her see. The first song was one she'd played constantly the summer they met, and she looked over at him, and he looked out the window like he hadn't done anything.

They pulled out at 6:34. The light was just starting to come up gray over the row of houses.


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

"It's the coast," Marcus called from the bathroom. "Bring the gray one. The other one sheds."

"It doesn't shed. It sheds a little."

"It sheds on me."

She packed the gray one and, after a moment's rebellion, the other one too, folded underneath where he wouldn't see it. Outside, the October light came slanting through the window over the driveway, catching the dust they kept meaning to do something about.

Marcus emerged with his toiletry bag, which he had owned since college and which had a hole in one corner. He set it on the dresser and started going through the checklist he kept in his head and narrated aloud, a habit that had annoyed her for the first year and now mostly didn't.

"Chargers. Toothbrush. The pills. Did you feed the cat?"

"Twice. She's furious about the carrier."

"She's not coming."

"She knows something's happening. She's furious on principle."

They carried the bags down together, Dana taking the smaller one and the tote of snacks she'd assembled at eleven the night before—pretzels, two apples, a bag of those gummy things Marcus pretended not to want. He loaded the trunk in his particular way, heavy things first, and she let him, standing on the walk with her arms crossed against the chill, watching a neighbor drag a recycling bin to the curb.

"Keys," she said.

He patted his pocket. Patted the other. Went back inside and came out ninety seconds later holding them up without comment.

She was already in the passenger seat, phone connected, thumbing through a playlist. He backed out slowly, checked the house once in the mirror—porch light off, door locked, the cat visible in the window like a small offended judge—and then turned onto the road, and they went.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Nadia had insisted on and Theo had grumbled about for three days. Now, standing in the kitchen in a hoodie and no socks, he had to admit she'd been right. The coffee maker gurgled. Outside their apartment window, Hartford was still dark and wet from overnight rain.

"Did you pack the phone charger, or should I?" Nadia called from the bedroom.

"Which one? The car one or the wall one?"

"Both. Obviously both."

Theo found the wall charger tangled behind the nightstand and tossed it toward the open duffel bag on the bed. It missed. Nadia picked it up without comment and zipped it into the side pocket, along with the ibuprofen and the sunscreen she'd bought specifically for this trip, even though it was October and they were going to Vermont.

They had rented a cabin outside Woodstock for two nights. It had a wood stove, according to the listing, and a view of something. Neither of them had read the description that carefully.

Theo carried the cooler down first. Two flights, a fire door that stuck, and the parking lot puddled with rain. He wedged the cooler behind the passenger seat and went back up for the bags while Nadia rinsed the coffee pot and unplugged the toaster and checked the stove twice.

"Litter box," she said, meeting him in the hallway.

"Marisol's coming at noon. She has the key."

"You told her about the wet food?"

"I texted her a photo of the can."

Nadia locked the door. Theo pulled out of the lot at 6:14, fourteen minutes behind the schedule she'd written on a Post-it, which he pointed out was actually pretty good for them. She put her feet on the dashboard, and he didn't say anything about it, and the highway opened up north of the city, gray and nearly empty, and neither of them said much for the first hour.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Maya slapped it quiet before it could wake Dev, though he was already awake, staring at the ceiling and mentally rehearsing the route.

"I dreamed we forgot the cooler," he said.

"We haven't packed the cooler yet, so technically you dreamed the present."

They moved around each other in the kitchen with the easy choreography of three years in the same eight hundred square feet. Dev filled a thermos and hunted for the good travel mugs, the ones with lids that actually sealed. Maya assembled sandwiches — turkey for her, hummus and cucumber for him — and wrapped them in wax paper because she'd read somewhere that plastic made the bread sweat.

The bag situation caused the only real argument. Dev had packed one duffel for two days. Maya had packed a duffel, a tote, and a separate small bag she described as "just the essentials that aren't in the other bags."

"It's two nights."

"One night. Two days. And it might rain, so there's a second pair of shoes."

He carried everything to the car anyway, stacking it in the trunk around the cooler while she went back inside twice — once for the phone charger, once because she couldn't remember if she'd turned off the coffee maker. She had. She checked the stove too, and the back door, and the timer on the porch light.

At six-fifteen they sat in the driveway with the engine running, the sky going gray-pink over the neighbor's roof. Dev handed her his phone with the directions open.

"Three hours and ten minutes," she said. "Less if you don't stop at every historical marker."

"I stop at interesting ones."

"You stopped at a plaque about a former plaque."

He pulled out onto the empty street. She rolled down the window, put her feet on the dash, and started scrolling for something they could both agree to listen to.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, which Dana had insisted on and Marcus had argued against, and now that it was ringing they both agreed it had been a mistake.

"Ten minutes," he said into the pillow.

"Seven." She was already up, pulling on the jeans she'd draped over the desk chair the night before.

By six-fifteen the kitchen smelled like coffee and the counter had become a staging area: two travel mugs, a bag of almonds, the phone charger neither of them could remember buying. Marcus went through the checklist he kept on his phone, a habit he'd developed after the Asheville trip where they'd arrived without a single pair of clean socks between them.

"Toothbrush," he said.

"Packed."

"The good jacket, not the one with the zipper."

Dana held it up without looking away from the window, where a neighbor's sprinkler had come on over an already-wet lawn. "You're the one who forgets the jacket."

They loaded the car in two trips. She took the duffel bags; he wedged the cooler behind the driver's seat and moved it three times before it stopped sliding. The cat sat in the front window watching all of it with visible disapproval, and Dana went back inside to top off the food dish and text their neighbor Priya again, apologizing for the third reminder.

"She's going to think we don't trust her," Marcus said.

"She's going to think we love our cat."

At six-fifty they backed out of the driveway. Dana drove the first leg because she liked highway merging and he didn't. Somewhere past the second exit she reached over and turned the radio down, and he found the playlist she'd made in March and hadn't admitted to making, and she pretended not to notice as the first song started.

The sun came up over the treeline. Two days felt like plenty.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Dana slapped it quiet before it could wake Marcus, who was already awake anyway, staring at the ceiling.

"We said six," he said.

"We always say six and leave at seven-fifteen. This year we leave at six-thirty."

They had lived together in the rented half of a duplex on Fulton Street for three years, long enough that packing had become a choreography. Marcus made coffee in the travel mugs while Dana rolled shirts instead of folding them, a trick she'd read about and defended loudly. He came back with the mugs and found her holding up two nearly identical gray hoodies.

"Bring the one with the pocket," he said.

"They both have pockets."

"Then bring the one you like."

She brought both. He didn't say anything.

The cooler took longer than it should have. Marcus insisted on hard-boiling eggs, which meant twelve minutes of standing at the stove while Dana carried bags to the car and returned to report on the weather, which was fifty-one degrees and gray, exactly as forecast. She watered the pothos on the windowsill and texted their neighbor Renee about the mail. Marcus wrapped the eggs in a paper towel, packed the cooler, and could not find the car keys.

They were in the door of the refrigerator, in the butter compartment.

"You put them there," Dana said.

"I don't dispute it."

At six-forty-one they backed out of the driveway. Dana drove because she liked the first shift, and Marcus fed the address of the cabin into his phone, then read the mileage out loud: two hundred and eighteen. He put his hand flat on her thigh, the way he always did, and she let it stay.

The town thinned out into industrial park, then farmland. Marcus turned on the radio, found nothing, turned it off, and started peeling an egg over the paper towel in his lap.

"Two days," Dana said.

"Two whole days," he said.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an unfinished argument.

"You're bringing three books for two days," Marcus said, holding one up by its spine.

"I'm bringing options." Nadia took it back and tucked it beside her rolled-up sweaters. She had a system: rolling, not folding, which she'd explained to him twice and which he'd rejected both times in favor of what he called organized chaos.

He was already moving through the apartment doing the small rituals of leaving. Thermostat down to sixty-two. Coffee maker unplugged. He checked the back door twice, the way his mother always had, and pretended not to notice Nadia noticing.

"Did you text Priya about the plant?"

"She's coming Saturday." Nadia zipped the suitcase, then unzipped it to add the phone charger she'd nearly forgotten. "Do we need to stop for gas?"

"Half a tank. We'll get some outside the city, it's cheaper."

They carried everything down two flights, Marcus taking the suitcase and the cooler, Nadia with her tote bag and the paper sack of snacks she'd assembled at eleven the night before—pretzels, two apples, a bag of the sour candy he liked and wouldn't admit to liking.

The car was cold. Marcus started it and let it run while Nadia arranged herself in the passenger seat, adjusting the vents, plugging her phone into the aux cord.

"Directions?"

"Two hours forty. There's traffic near the bridge but it clears."

He pulled out of the lot and onto the street, past the laundromat and the shuttered barber shop, past the intersection where they always argued about which lane. Nadia put her hand on his knee. He put his hand over hers, then took it back to signal.

Behind them the apartment sat empty, quiet, holding its breath. Ahead the highway opened up gray and long, and Nadia found the song she'd been saving, and turned it up.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still holding a receipt from their trip to Asheville two years ago. She shook it out over the trash can and set it on the bed.

"Are you bringing the hiking boots?" she called.

Devon appeared in the doorway holding two coffee mugs, one of which he handed to her. "It's supposed to rain Saturday afternoon. I figured we'd do the trail in the morning, then find a bookstore or something."

"So yes on the boots."

"Yes on the boots."

They packed the way they always did, which was to say inefficiently. Maya folded things into neat stacks; Devon rolled his shirts and jammed them into the corners. He kept adding items — a deck of cards, a portable speaker, a second flannel — and she kept quietly removing about half of them. Neither one mentioned it. It had become a kind of ritual.

The cat, Ollie, sat in the open suitcase until Devon lifted him out and deposited him on the floor, where he immediately climbed back in.

"Did you text Priya about the litter box?"

"She's coming Friday and Saturday night," Maya said. "I left the food on the counter with a note. And the spare key under the planter."

By eleven they were carrying bags down the front steps into a bright, cold morning. Devon backed the car out while Maya locked the deadbolt and checked it twice, then jogged down to the curb. She got in, buckled, and immediately pulled her phone out to queue up the playlist she'd been building for a week.

"Gas first?" she said.

"Gas first. And then those apple things from the place on Route 9."

"Obviously."

He pulled onto the street. Maya put her feet up on the dashboard, and he didn't tell her not to, and the house shrank in the side mirror as they went.


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

"You packed three books," Marisol said. "For two days."

"I don't know what mood I'll be in." Devin held them up, weighing them. "This one's for if it rains. This one's for the porch."

"And the third?"

"Insurance."

She laughed and went back to rolling her sweaters the way her mother had taught her, tight cylinders that never wrinkled. Outside, the September light came slanting through the blinds of the bedroom they'd shared for two years now, in a rented house with a crooked kitchen door and a landlord who took nine days to answer the phone.

Devin went downstairs to deal with the refrigerator. He threw out half a carton of blueberries, a container of soup neither of them would admit to having made, and a lime. He filled the cat's bowls, then filled them again because Pistachio ate like the world was ending.

"Did you text Ruth about the cat?" he called.

"Two days ago. She's coming Saturday morning." Marisol appeared with the suitcase, thumping it down step by step. "Did you print the reservation?"

"It's on my phone."

"Print it."

"Nobody prints things."

"The cabin's in the mountains. There's no signal. You told me that. Yesterday. Proudly."

He printed it.

By four they were in the driveway, Marisol wedging a grocery bag of snacks behind the passenger seat, Devin checking the tire he'd been worrying about all week. It looked fine. It always looked fine.

"Coffee or gas first?" she asked.

"Both. Same place."

She got in, put her feet on the dash, took them down again when he gave her a look. He backed out slowly past the neighbor's recycling bins. At the stop sign she found the playlist she'd made, the one she'd pretended not to make, and turned it up, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was its own kind of talking.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Nora hit it before the second beep. Beside her, Danny groaned into the pillow.

"You said you'd be up first," she reminded him, already pulling on the jeans she'd left folded on the chair.

"I said I'd try."

Downstairs, she started the coffee while he dragged their bags to the door. They'd packed the night before, mostly — Nora had, anyway, with the methodical layering she brought to everything. Danny had thrown a hoodie and two T-shirts into a duffel at eleven-fifteen and called it done.

"Did you cancel the milk delivery?" he asked, meaning the joke they'd been running for three years, since neither of them had ever had milk delivered.

"Yes. And I texted Priya about the cat."

Priya lived two doors down and had a key. The cat, Waffles, sat on the stair landing watching the suitcases with obvious suspicion.

They ate toast standing at the counter. Danny checked the tire pressure on the Corolla with a gauge he'd bought specifically for this trip, then reported, with some pride, that everything was fine. Nora filled two travel mugs and found the phone charger that had migrated under the couch.

"Playlist?" she said, getting in.

"Made one. Forty minutes of it is that band you hate."

"Then we'll get to the ocean in silence."

By six-twenty they were out of the neighborhood, past the shuttered bagel place, past the high school with its dark parking lot. The sky over the interstate was going pale gray at the edges. Nora put her bare feet up on the dash, which Danny hated and permitted.

"Two whole days," she said.

"Two whole days." He merged, checked his mirror, and reached over without looking to find her hand on the console. She let him have it, and they drove east.


The alarm went off at five, which Dana thought was aggressive for a trip that involved no airports. Marcus was already in the kitchen, filling the thermos he'd bought specifically for road trips and used maybe twice.

"You packed the good pillow?" he called.

"I packed both good pillows." She was standing in the hallway with a duffel bag, trying to remember whether the cabin listing said towels provided or bring your own towels. She'd screenshotted it. The screenshot was somewhere in a camera roll of four thousand photos, most of them the dog.

Speaking of the dog: Rosie had figured out something was happening and was doing her anxious pacing, nails clicking on the floor. Marcus crouched to scratch her ears while Dana texted her sister, who was coming by at noon to feed her.

They loaded the car in the blue dark of the driveway. Marcus took the bags; Dana took the cooler, which was heavier than it needed to be because he'd packed six beers for two nights, plus seltzer, plus a block of cheddar in case of what, she didn't ask.

"Did you unplug the space heater?"

"Yes."

"The one in the bathroom?"

He stopped. Went back inside. Came out ninety seconds later holding his sunglasses, which he'd also forgotten, and gave her a small nod of acknowledgment.

She drove first because she liked the empty highway and he liked to sleep for the first forty minutes and pretend he hadn't. They got coffee at the gas station off the interstate exit, the kind that tasted like a paper cup, and Marcus paid, and Dana got a bag of pretzels she'd finish before the first hour was out.

Somewhere past the county line the sun came up over a field of nothing in particular, and she reached over and put her hand on his knee, and he covered it with his, and neither of them said anything about it.


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

"You said you'd pack last night," Delia murmured into her pillow.

"I did pack. Mentally." Owen rolled out of bed and padded toward the closet, where his duffel sat exactly where he'd left it three weeks ago, still holding a damp towel from the lake. He held it up. "This is a problem."

Delia laughed and went to start the coffee. Their apartment in Providence was small enough that she could hear him swearing at the washing machine while she filled two travel mugs and dug the good cooler out from under the sink. She made sandwiches—turkey for her, ham for him—and wrapped them in wax paper, then added two peaches that were finally ripe and a bag of pretzels because Owen refused to drive anywhere without pretzels.

By six-fifteen he had a backpack instead of the duffel, which he declared "more Vermont anyway." Delia checked the reservation on her phone for the third time: two nights, one queen bed, the inn twenty minutes outside Woodstock, breakfast included. She'd been talking about it since February.

They argued briefly about the thermostat, agreed on sixty-two, and unplugged the toaster. Owen carried the bags down while Delia left a note and a key for their neighbor Rosalind, who had agreed to feed the cat in exchange for maple candy.

The car took two tries to start. Owen backed out of the narrow driveway with one hand behind Delia's headrest, the way he always did, and she plugged her phone into the aux cord and pulled up the playlist she'd made in secret, forty-one songs, all of them things he liked.

The sun was just clearing the rooftops on Broadway. Delia rolled her window down two inches. Owen reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and they drove north.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken two summers ago. She dropped it on the bed and started making piles: T-shirts, one sweater, the good socks.

"Are you bringing the hiking boots or not?" Daniel called from the bathroom. He was crouched in front of the cabinet under the sink, hunting for the travel-size toothpaste he swore they still had.

"Sneakers. It's supposed to rain Sunday morning."

"Then bring the boots."

She considered this, then put the boots by the door.

He came out holding a mostly empty tube and a razor. "We're out of toothpaste. Real toothpaste, I mean."

"There's a Walgreens by the exit ramp."

They moved around each other in the small bedroom without much talking, the way people do when they've shared a space long enough to know each other's orbit. Daniel unplugged the coffee maker, then the toaster, then the lamp in the living room, because his mother had raised him to fear house fires. Maya wrote a note for their neighbor Ruth about the cat—two scoops, morning and evening, and don't let her out on the fire escape.

At eleven-fifteen they carried everything down to the car. Daniel loaded the trunk in his particular Tetris arrangement while Maya stood on the sidewalk drinking the last of her coffee from a mug she'd forgotten she was holding.

"You're bringing the mug," he said.

"Apparently."

She ran it back upstairs, locked the door, checked it twice, and came down again. Daniel had the engine running and the windows cracked. She got in, buckled up, and pulled a folded map from the glove box out of habit, even though her phone was already mounted on the dash.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Walgreens first."

He pulled out into the street, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still faintly smelling of the campground they'd visited in September. She dropped it on the bed and started making piles: two shirts, jeans, the wool socks she always forgot until she was cold.

Devon came in with the coffee maker's carafe in one hand, drinking straight from it, which she'd told him twice was disgusting. "The reservation's under my name," he said. "Check-in's at three, so if we leave by eleven we'll have time to stop in Hudson."

"There's that bakery."

"There's the bakery."

He set the carafe down on the dresser, which she also had opinions about, and went to find the phone chargers. It took him eleven minutes and he found only one, so they agreed to share.

Maya walked through the apartment doing what she called the sweep. Thermostat down to sixty. Dishwasher started. The good knife out of the sink, where Devon had left it. She texted their neighbor Priya about the mail and got back a thumbs-up and a picture of Priya's cat, which Maya showed to Devon, who said, "That cat looks unwell," which was true.

They loaded the car at 10:40. Devon insisted the bags go in the trunk; Maya insisted her tote ride up front with the snacks. Neither argued long. He backed out of the space while she scrolled for the playlist she'd made two nights ago, a little embarrassed about how much thought she'd put into it.

At the corner, he braked. "Did I lock the door?"

"You locked it. I watched you."

"Okay." He turned onto the parkway. The sky was the pale gray of early November, and the trees along the ramp had gone mostly bare.

Maya put her hand on his knee and pressed play. Forty-eight hours, no laptops. They were already out of the city.


Maya found the duffel bag under the bed, still gritty with sand from August. She shook it out over the trash can while Devin argued with the coffee maker in the kitchen, which had started making a sound like a distressed goose sometime in October.

"We could just get gas station coffee," he called.

"We could, or you could stop hitting it."

By seven-thirty they had a system, or something resembling one. Maya packed clothes for both of them because Devin, left to his own devices, would bring four T-shirts and no socks. Devin handled the logistics: the printed confirmation for the cabin outside Asheville, the tire pressure, the oil that he'd been meaning to change for three weeks and now checked with a paper towel and a shrug. He filled a thermos. He found the good playlist.

They argued briefly about the cooler—whether two days justified one—and settled it by filling it with sandwiches, a six-pack, and a bag of baby carrots that neither of them would touch. Maya texted their neighbor Rosa about the cat. Devin double-checked the stove, then checked it again, then let Maya check it so he could stop.

"Front door," she said.

"Locked."

"Back door."

"Locked. Windows. Thermostat's at sixty."

The car smelled like the pine air freshener he'd bought ironically two years ago. Maya put her feet on the dash, then took them down when he glanced over. She had a paper map she'd printed as a joke and would end up using near Marion when the signal dropped.

They pulled out at 8:12. At the stop sign, Devin said, "Did you—" and Maya held up her phone charger without looking at him.

The highway opened up ahead of them, gray and wet from overnight rain, and for the first eleven miles neither of them said anything at all, which was, she thought, the best part.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like an accusation, and Delia stood over it with two pairs of shoes in her hands.

"Boots or sneakers?" she called.

"Both." Marcus's voice came from the hallway, muffled by the closet. "It's supposed to rain Saturday afternoon."

"That's two pairs of shoes for two days."

"That's the correct number of shoes for two days."

She packed both. In the kitchen, Marcus was making sandwiches, because he refused on principle to pay eleven dollars for a gas station wrap. He wrapped them in wax paper and wrote *turkey* and *the other turkey but with mustard* on them in ballpoint pen.

Delia unplugged the toaster, the coffee maker, the lamp by the couch. She had read something once about house fires and had never recovered from it. Marcus watched her go around the apartment yanking cords and said nothing, because he had learned in four years that this was not a battle worth having, and also because he'd come to find it a little endearing.

"Did you text your mom?" she asked.

"I texted her the address of the cabin, the license plate, and a photograph of the cabin's front door. She's satisfied."

They carried everything down two flights: the suitcase, the cooler, a canvas bag of books neither of them would open. It was seven-forty in the morning and the street was gray and wet from an overnight rain. Marcus loaded the trunk in his particular way, heaviest things first, while Delia held the door and drank coffee from a travel mug that had been a gift from someone they could no longer identify.

"Keys," she said.

He patted his pocket. Patted the other pocket. Went back upstairs.

When he returned, jingling them, she was already in the passenger seat with the map on her phone, and she looked up at him through the windshield and made a face, and he laughed, and got in, and they went.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the hall closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken two summers ago. She hauled it into the bedroom and dropped it on the bed, where Devon was already folding shirts into precise rectangles.

"You know it's two days," she said. "Not two weeks."

"Three shirts. That's reasonable." He held one up, considered it, and put it back in the drawer. "Two shirts."

She packed the way she always did, in a burst of decisions she'd regret later — a sweater she wouldn't need in October, no umbrella, the paperback she'd been failing to finish since March. Devon went through the house doing his circuit: thermostat down, coffee maker unplugged, the back door checked twice. He filled the cat's bowl to the brim and set the second bowl beside it, though their neighbor Renata had promised to come by both mornings.

"She knows about the pills," Maya said from the doorway.

"I texted her the schedule."

"You made a schedule?"

"It's a spreadsheet." He said it without apology, and she laughed, and he almost smiled.

They loaded the car in the gray early light, Maya taking the driver's seat because the first two hours were highway and she liked highway. Devon put the coffees in the cupholders, hers with too much sugar, and unfolded the printed directions he'd brought as a hedge against dead zones in the mountains.

Halfway down the block, Maya braked. "Did you lock the front door?"

He was already unbuckling. She watched him jog back up the walk, try the knob, find it locked, and stand there a second in the cold with his hands in his pockets, looking at the house. Then he came back and got in, and she pulled out onto the main road, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


Maya found the duffel bag in the hall closet, behind the vacuum and a box of Christmas lights they'd never gotten around to putting away. She dropped it on the bed and started counting out socks.

"Two nights or one?" Devon called from the bathroom.

"One night, two days. We leave Saturday morning, we come back Sunday evening."

"So one pair of socks."

"Bring two." She heard him laugh. He came out with his shaving kit, a toothbrush sticking out of the zipper, and set it on the dresser like an offering.

They had been together four years and in this apartment for two, long enough that the packing had a choreography to it. Devon handled the car — oil, tires, the phone mount that kept sliding off the windshield. Maya handled the cooler: string cheese, two apples, a bag of pretzels, four bottles of water, and the peanut butter crackers Devon pretended not to want and then ate all of.

Friday night she wrote a note for the neighbor about the cat. Devon printed the reservation confirmation because he didn't trust his phone in the mountains, and Maya teased him for it, and then thanked him twice.

They got up at six-fifteen. Devon made coffee in travel mugs while Maya walked through the rooms unplugging things — toaster, space heater, the lamp with the frayed cord. She checked the stove twice. He checked it a third time on his way out, which she saw and didn't mention.

The hallway smelled like someone else's breakfast. Devon carried the duffel and the cooler down two flights while Maya locked the deadbolt and jiggled the knob to be sure.

In the car he handed her the aux cable without being asked. She picked something quiet for the first few miles. The sun came up somewhere behind a warehouse as they merged onto the highway, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Nadia hit it before it could finish its second chirp. Beside her, Theo groaned into the pillow.

"You said you'd be excited," she reminded him, already pulling on jeans.

"I am excited. Excited people can also be asleep."

She left him there and went to start the coffee. The kitchen was still dark, the window over the sink showing nothing but their own reflection and the blue-gray suggestion of the neighbor's fence. She measured grounds, filled the reservoir, then checked the cooler bag: two turkey sandwiches, a bag of pretzels, four seltzers, the good mustard packets she'd stolen from a deli in March.

Theo came in barefoot, hair flattened on one side, carrying his duffel and hers. "Did you pack a jacket? It's supposed to drop to fifty at night."

"In the side pocket."

"And the thing for your—"

"Yes. In the side pocket."

He set the bags by the door and went back for the phone chargers, which were, as always, tangled behind the couch. Nadia watered the fern that never quite forgave them for leaving. She wrote a note for Marisol next door: *Cat food's on the counter, she'll pretend she hasn't eaten. Back Sunday evening.*

They loaded the car in two trips. Theo checked the tire pressure with the little pencil gauge his father had given him, crouching in the driveway while Nadia scraped a film of dew off the windshield with her forearm and then wiped her arm on his shirt.

"Charming," he said.

"You're welcome."

She took the first shift driving. He held both coffees until she'd merged onto the highway, then handed hers over and unfolded the printed directions he'd insisted on making, in case of dead zones.

"Two hours forty," he said. "Maybe three with the bridge."

The sun came up somewhere around the county line, orange on the guardrails, and neither of them said anything for a while.


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

"Two days," Marisol said, holding up a third sweater. "It's two days, Dev."

"It's the mountains. It gets cold at night." He took the sweater from her and folded it into the corner anyway, then went back to arguing with the coffee maker, which had started making a noise like a dying refrigerator sometime last March. He unplugged it. The noise continued for another three seconds out of spite.

Marisol had made a list on the back of an envelope: *trash out, plants, thermostat, Kelsey key.* She crossed off the trash while Dev filled the watering can. The pothos on the bookshelf had gone yellow at the tips again, and he tipped a little water in and said, as he always said, "You're on thin ice, buddy."

At eight-forty their neighbor Kelsey came by for the spare key and the cat instructions, which were four sentences long and which Marisol explained for ninety seconds anyway. Kelsey nodded patiently. The cat, Ophelia, watched all of this from the top of the fridge with the flat contempt of someone who had never once needed anyone.

Dev carried the bag down. Marisol did the last walk-through — stove knobs, bathroom light, the window in the back that never quite latched. She pressed her thumb against the frame until it clicked.

In the car, she found the playlist she'd built two weeks ago and had been saving. He backed out of the driveway and stopped halfway down the street.

"Did you—"

"Yes," she said. "Locked. I checked twice."

"Okay."

He drove. Past the gas station on Ainsley, past the elementary school, onto the highway where the light came sideways through the windshield and turned the dust on the dashboard gold. Marisol put her feet on the seat. Somewhere behind them, a cat took possession of an empty house.


Maya found the duffel bag in the back of the closet, still smelling faintly of the lake trip they'd taken two summers ago. She dropped it on the bed and started sorting: two shirts, jeans, the green sweater in case the evenings turned cold.

"Are you bringing the good boots or the hiking ones?" Dev called from the bathroom, where he was rummaging for travel-sized toothpaste.

"Both. It's only two days, not a pilgrimage." She heard him laugh.

He came out with a plastic bag of toiletries and set it by the bag, then paused. "Did we ever call the neighbor about the mail?"

"I texted Priya this morning. She's got the spare key." Maya zipped the duffel halfway, then unzipped it again to add a phone charger. "Can you check if the coffee maker's off?"

Dev went to the kitchen. The coffee maker was off, but a mug still sat half full on the counter, so he dumped it and rinsed it and left it in the rack. He also emptied the small trash bag, tied it, and carried it out to the bin by the driveway, where the morning air was cool and a jogger passed without looking up.

By nine-thirty they were loading the car, a fifteen-year-old sedan with a dent in the rear panel from a parking garage neither of them liked to discuss. Maya put the duffel in the trunk. Dev put a cooler beside it, containing two sandwiches, a bag of pretzels, and four cans of seltzer.

"Snacks?" she said.

"Snacks."

She checked the front door twice, the second time just to feel better about it. Then she got into the passenger seat and pulled up the directions on her phone while Dev adjusted the mirror.

"Three hours, forty minutes," she said.

"Less if you let me drive fast."

"I won't."

He backed out of the driveway, and they turned onto the main road together.


The suitcase lay open on the bed like a small, patient animal, and Dana kept adding things to it. Two shirts, then a third, then the cardigan she never wore but might, in Vermont, in October.

"You're bringing books," Marcus observed from the doorway. He had a coffee mug in each hand.

"One book."

"Two books. I can see two books."

She took the mug he offered and drank. "The second one is for if the first one is bad."

Marcus set his coffee on the dresser and started rolling his own clothes into tight cylinders, the way his mother had taught him, the way he'd been trying to teach Dana for three years without success. Jeans, two flannels, running shoes he probably wouldn't use. He zipped the bag in under four minutes and felt smug about it until he remembered he hadn't packed a toothbrush.

Downstairs, they went through the ritual. Dana unplugged the toaster and the space heater. Marcus checked the back door twice, then a third time because Dana asked him to. They stood in the kitchen looking at the refrigerator's contents like archaeologists.

"The yogurt will be fine," Dana said.

"The yogurt expires Sunday."

"We'll be back Sunday."

"Sunday afternoon."

She ate the yogurt standing over the sink while he loaded the car, and when she came out to the driveway he was adjusting the passenger seat forward for her because he'd driven last.

The neighbor's dog barked. The morning was cold enough to see their breath. Dana got in, put her feet on the dashboard, took them down when Marcus gave her a look, then put them back up.

"Playlist?" he said.

"Already queued."

He backed out slowly, both of them checking the mirrors, and turned left onto the street toward the highway, the house shrinking behind them with its dark windows and its unplugged toaster and its empty yogurt container in the sink.