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Hildie's hands stop for a second.

"Does he make you happy?"

"I don't know him well enough for that."

"Then you better get to know him. He will make you happy. He's a good boy."

She goes back to her washcloth, and I stare at mine.

Carson has the plates out when I come through the carport door. Chicken and rice, a can of green beans emptied into a pot on the stove. He doesn't ask if it's enough. He just fills a plate and hands it over and I take it.

The movie F1 is playing on the television, and somewhere between dinner and the second race I've gotten embarrassingly invested.

"He's not making that turn," I say.

Carson doesn't look away from the screen. "He'll make it."

"He absolutely will not."

The car slips through. I point my fork at him. "Lucky."

"Skill."

"You're taking credit for a fictional race now?"

"I called it."

I take the couch. It's five foot four inches long, which I only know because Carson told me at Christmas. I fold my legs up and fit, feet on the far cushion, plate balanced on the shelf of my stomach. Carson lowers himself to the floor with his back against the couch, boots crossed at the ankle, plate on his knee.

The cedar chest is where it was on Christmas night. The quilts are folded over its lid in the same place we left them. I don't say anything about the room, and neither does he.

"Beans are hot," he says. "Careful."

"Noted."

We eat. On the screen, somebody takes a corner too wide and nearly clips the barrier. Carson makes a low sound like he saw it coming.

Somewhere in the back half of the movie, the couch stops being a couch and becomes the softest thing in the world, and I go under. When I open my eyes, the credits are rolling over a darkened track. The lamp is off. He must have turned it off when he saw I'd fallen asleep.

He's still on the floor, his arm stretched along the edge of the cushion near my hip, not touching me.

"You were out cold."

"I'm told that happens."

I work myself upright, get my feet under me, and pad into the kitchen for water. The tap runs warm before it runs cold. I fill a glass and gulp it down.

His keys are on the counter with the receipt from the baby store tucked underneath them. I pick it up to see what we spent today. There's writing on the back, his block letters showing through the thin paper. I turn it over, expecting another list of baby things.

Instead, what I see is an accounting of two round-trip flights from Denver to Tampa, rental cars both times, stacked up and totaled.

Beside that it says, "Eli, six weeks of wages.” The totals are almost identical. Underneath them, by itself, he's written one word that's underlined.

Hay.

I stare at it long enough to understand what I'm looking at. He isn't figuring out what it costs to stay here. He's figuring out how to make staying here cost the same as leaving.

I fold the receipt the way it was and set it back exactly where it lay, keys on top. I fill my glass again and go back.