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“I could meet you somewhere nearby,” he whispered into her hair. “There have to be places like this in New Hampshire.”

“Sex hotels?” Lily asked. Her voice was strict, but the rest of her wasn’t.

“No, not a sex hotel. Something classy. I promise,” he said as he kissed her neck. “It’ll be classy.”

“It’s the family vacation,” she said.

Gavin took a deep breath and fell back against the pillow.

“And tonight is a Tuesday,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

Instead of answering, Lily kissed him with her full mouth, even though she tasted like sex and dehydration.

“Just six weeks,” she said, gathering her coat from beside the bed. “Then I’ll be back, and it’ll be like I never left.”

“It’s never like you never left.”

As she turned the key in her car, Lily clicked on her cell phone. No missed calls. She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror: she had that sex-stung look, but it was nothing she couldn’t cover with lip gloss and enthusiasm. She could say she went on a walk after work. She could say she witnessed an accident. She pulled the car out of the motel’s parking lot. It would only be six weeks, she thought, turning up the radio to block out every thought that followed.

“I’m home!” she said as she hung her keys on the ring next to Silas’s. “Babe?”

“Back here!”

Lily dropped her bag and coat in the front hall and walked through the house to the kitchen. Silas was bent over the stove, a knife in hand.

“Welcome home!” he said, not looking back. He was carving meat, being cautious around the bones.

“Are they home?”

“Sean is in his room. He said he was doing his homework, but I’m pretty sure he snuck the PlayStation in there again. I haven’t been able to bust him yet; you know how careful you have to be with lamb,” Silas answered, throwing a dish towel over his shoulder. Lily leaned against the island in their kitchen.

The air smelled like rosemary and long-simmered wine. Lily smelled like Gavin. The two scents mixed as she spoke.

“Mickey still at camp?”

“She should be back any minute.”

She thought about going up to Silas and sticking out her finger for a taste of his sauce, the way she used to. Pushing her face under his arm until he lifted it and made room for her.

“Any word on the house sitter?” she asked instead.

“Amanda can do it,” Silas answered. He shook a spice jar over the saucepan.

“The whole time? Six weeks is a long time for a teenager.”

“Lil, she’s just going to water the plants and get the mail. I think she can handle it.” He put down the jar and grabbed another one.

Lily looked around the kitchen. “We need to clean this place before we go.”

“We still have two weeks,” Silas said. “We’ll get it done.”

The New Hampshire Harrison home. Silas had grown up spending his summers there, and, ever since she was sixteen, Lily had spent hers there too. It was old and made lonely sounds at night, but it was beautiful. The kids loved it.

“Dinner will be ready in thirty. Wanna go ground your son while you’re waiting?” Silas asked. Lily looked up the stairs toward Sean’s room and shook her head.

“I’m going to take a quick shower first; I worked out after work.”

Silas turned to face her, and it caught her off guard. Sometimes, in movement, Silas looked exactly like the boy she fell in love with. When he was still, she noticed the way the skin around his eyes had begun to pucker, as if already starting the slow migration into the ground. But when he was in motion, she noticed only his eyes: kindergartners’ sky blue, so fiercely blue that the marker bleeds right through the page. Those hadn’t changed since high school. In fact, they looked even brighter behind his slightly graying hair.

Lily thought about Gavin’s hands on her that afternoon. The way he grabbed for her, reached for her. Like she was the surface and he was drowning.

“What kind of workout did you do?”

Lily’s heart kicked up a notch, but only a notch. Sometimes she wondered which would be worse: to get caught, or not to.

“Treadmill,” she answered.

“You look good.”

He didn’t come near her, but he looked like maybe he wanted to.

“Well, someone’s gotta fix what those monsters of ours did to me,” Lily said, her palm slick on the banister.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Silas said before turning back to the stove.

Lily stopped in front of Sean’s door, listening to the hacks and slashes of the PlayStation. He would hear from her later, she thought. Just as soon as she washed the spit from her thighs.





PEYOTE





MY MONITOR BEEPED, AND I clicked out of the Harrisons’ to check my inbox. It was a Spec Three, my personal favorite. I hadn’t been at this job for too long, but it was long enough to know which people were my favorites. For Hell, I mean. Not for socializing.

I clicked on the message, and the video came up.

“Please,” a girl said, her hands pressed together on the top of a mailbox. The rest of the scene filled in around her: a tree-lined street, dappled sunlight glinting off the windows of big houses. “Please, please let me get in. My mom will kill me if I don’t get in. Please, please, God, or whoever is listening: I’ll do whatever you want if you just let me get in.”