Edith added an hour to her drive to avoid Virginia.

(You don’t know how little they matter.)

Treats mewled in her crate on the passenger seat. Unhappy whenever she was not napping. At rest stops she clambered through the car and Edith had to extract her, yowling, from under the seats. We’ll be home soon, baby, she said, and Treats bit her finger.

She called friends while she drove.

Bernard was happy to hear from her. I’m glad you got out. Texas wasn’t your place.

Glad to be rid of me? She was slightly manic from the drive.

If you don’t visit I’ll be so mad at you. He told her about the last party he’d thrown: the dogs had gotten in his new hot tub; Di had done a backflip before everyone’s open eyes.

Do you hear from Cyrus much? Edith asked.

Cyrus isn’t the sort to call. We’ll see each other around, somewhere here.

Adam was thrilled she’d be so close.

Not as close as Somerville.

It’s better this way. Strike out on your own, make a new life for yourself. Date a Mount Holyoke professor.

Ugh they’re probably all TERFs. Edith gnawed a piece of beef jerky. She pressed a cat treat through the bars of the crate. Hey Adam, don’t tell Tess yet, okay?

Sure thing. No hesitation. He either understood or did not need to.

When there was no one to call, she listened to “Raytracer” on repeat for an hour.

When there was no driving left in her, she stopped at the nearest La Quinta and watched Treats sniff every sterile corner.

(All those roads connect. You wouldn’t believe where they’ll lead.)

(“How does it happen? How did you ever get to be here?”)

There was lightness in motion. Every foot of earth behind you by the time you noticed it.

Ugh, there was some disgusting shit at the capital today, Seb said. People getting clobbered by the cops. Promise you won’t forget our struggles in your northern utopia.

Ah yes, Massachusetts—a state famously free of police brutality.

It’s gotta be good for you, though. Do you remember what it’s like to not constantly worry about your home state’s particular violence?

Bernard’s voice: Which state would that be?

No, I don’t.

Seb said they might follow her up there. Do they have brown people in Massachusetts? It’s there or Berlin, I hear there’s a real scene there.

Oh yeah, I hear that Magnus Hirschfeld guy is doing great work.

Shut up, you. They laughed. Tell Treats I love and miss her.

A landscape like the landscape of her youth. Trees bled autumn. She pissed in the woods to avoid rest stop bathrooms; she ate in her car to keep Treats company. She ignored her mother’s calls. She let the music play on. She’d left no forwarding address. Everything goes on unimaginably. Everything ends all at once.

(We mostly make the choices we need to. I don’t care if that sounds stupid.)

(I knew that was all correct. That nothing needed to be any other way.)

Maybe this was all you needed. Maybe you could keep moving until you found a life that stuck, or got tired of searching.

When there was no one to call she listened to the 1995 cast recording of Company. We don’t need to get into what it made her think of.

Would she make it to Tessa and Devin’s wedding? Even the phrase, that conjunction, put her on edge. A life that would never be hers.

(“I wish—”)

But she would go. Wasn’t that the point of moving? So that, by the time July 15 came, she would be grounded, imperturbable as a sea-battered cliff?

Edith didn’t want to be in love. She didn’t want to be still. She wanted to drive toward the opposite coast and let Cyrus fuck her until she forgot that her wanting mattered. She wanted to get hurt, stay hurting. Resolution was for suckers. Resolution would have its time.

Northampton was exactly as she’d envisioned. Old buildings pressed together, a clock-faced steeple needling the sky. Her building was a fourplex. The night was cold, and there was no sign of her neighbors. The last tenant had left a particleboard desk that swayed under the first box of books.

Tomorrow she’d get a bed. Bookshelves. She’d have to build a life from scratch. It was, as Seb pointed out, costlier than staying put.

But so what. There was no rush. All her deadlines were arbitrary.

She slept that night curled in a sleeping bag on the cold floor. Treats perched on her hip. Of course she’d go to the wedding. That was how you turned your life into a comedy. And until then, she’d work out everything that could be worked out. She’d fill her blank document with words about a life like hers, a life that might be better, that might teach her the language of her need. Adam and Michael would visit. Soon she’d have a real life.

Streetlight came through the apartment windows. She’d need curtains. Curled up deeper in the dark, face pressed to her pillow, she thought: curtains, curtains, curtains. Don’t let another night pass like this.

Sometime soon she’d talk to Tessa. She wasn’t sure what she’d say. Close, but not too close, to home. Edith might tell her she was living here before the wedding, but you never knew. Perhaps by then she would have moved on.