They moved into a smaller place on the other side of town. Marissa took more listings. Garrett, to everyone’s surprise, started keeping a spreadsheet and cooking at home. It turns out even middle-aged men can learn arithmetic when the draft stops clearing.
As for me, I went to the Blue Ridge with Lorine in May and laughed like a schoolgirl over bad coffee at a mountain inn that smelled of cedar and lemon polish.
In June, I booked Italy.
Not someday. Not after the holidays. Not once everybody else settled down. Not once it became more convenient for the people who had spent years making me less convenient for them.
I booked it.
Six months after the text, I was sitting on a terrace in Tuscany with a glass of wine in my hand and warm evening light on my face.
The hills rolled away in soft gold and green. Cypress trees rose like brushstrokes against the sky. Below us, somebody was carrying plates through an open doorway, and somewhere in the square a violin was playing something slow and bright at the same time. Lorine was across from me, writing in a little travel journal she had bought at the airport and already nearly filled.
“You’re smiling again,” she said without looking up.
“I know.”