She walked me to the door. Pen got up off the rug with the slow, careful unfolding she did now. Moose got up beside her and pressed his shoulder against her shoulder until she had her legs under her. He'd been doing it for a week. I hadn't taught him.
At the door, Astrid put her hand on the frame—same place I'd seen her put it the first time I'd been in her house.
"Are you good to make it home?" she said.
"It's a hundred and twenty feet, Astrid."
"Some men have trouble with stairs after dark."
A small smile. The real version of it, this time. Slower to arrive. Easier in the corners.
I let myself look at her for a beat. She let me.
I lifted my hand and put it on the back of her neck—her hair was cool from the night air coming through the screen—and let it sit there for a count of one.
"Lock this behind me," I said.
"I will."
"All the way."
I went down her front steps with Pen at my hip.
I heard the deadbolt slide before I'd made the front walk.
Crossing Maple at night was a thing I'd done six hundred times in eighteen months and never noticed. I noticed it that night. On her side, the porch light was on. On my side, the light was off, the windows were dark, and the boxes sat in the hallway where I'd set them down a year and a half ago.
I unlocked the front door. Pen went past me to the kitchen for water.
I'd told Shane I'd be back in February.
I hadn't bought a single piece of packing tape. I hadn't called the realtor in three weeks. I hadn't made a list of what was going in the truck. I had not, in fact, done a single thing about leaving Hartsdale since the Thursday I drove a vet I barely knew southon Route 23 with my grandmother's dog in the back seat and let her put her hand on Penny's flank for forty minutes.
I went into the kitchen. Penny was at her water bowl. I got a glass down, filled it at the tap, and stood at the sink, looking out at the dark yard where the roses were, and where my grandmother was, under them.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket.
I scrolled to Shane.
My thumb hovered over the call button for a long time.
I put the phone on the counter face down.
I put my hands on the edge of the sink and let my head drop between my shoulders.
"Pen," I said to the dog who'd settled her chin on my bare foot like she did every night, "I think we've got a problem."
She huffed.
I thought about Astrid's palm turning up to meet mine at the kitchen table. About the fact that I'd told Shane I was coming back in the new year, and I meant it when I said it, and in eighteen months of telling myself I was leaving, I hadn't packed a single box of dishes.
The math had been the same for a year. It just stopped being math I could lie about.
I picked the phone back up and turned it over.
I didn't call Shane.
I opened a new text and typed her name.
