The ceiling of the terminal held winter like a secret. Greenish-blue vaults rose in long arches, painted with golden constellations that caught the holiday light and threw it back onto the crowd below.
Three great windows faced the season with wreaths of pine and glowing bulbs, each wreath large enough to frame a small weather system of its own. Travelers in wool and down pressed past one another with rolling bags and paper cups, their breath still carrying the cold from outside.
At the center of the hall, an information booth wore an ornate golden clock with four faces, each one indifferent to anyone's hurry, each one gleaming as if time itself had dressed for the holidays.
Sloane Merriweather stood beside three matching structured maroon leather travel bags and felt the hour tightening around her ribs. She was late twenties going on thirty-one, long vibrant red hair escaping the collar of a tailored dark green wool coat worn over a cream turtleneck, a brown-and-black plaid skirt brushing her knees above boots she would soon trade for something less practical. Beside her, Felix Merriweather—same age in the way married people sometimes seemed to share a calendar—wore a dark blue-black overcoat over a light blue dress shirt, a dark patterned tie, and a thick dark green knit scarf she had given him two Christmases ago. His dark brown wavy hair was still damp at the temples from the walk in from the taxi. He looked, as he often did in transit, like a man trying to invent punctuality by sheer posture.
They had three bags for one weekend in North Springs, and Sloane had already begun to regret the arithmetic of luggage, of marriage, of how much a person could carry without admitting what it weighed.
A chime rolled through the terminal and dissolved into announcement static. Someone's child pointed up at the painted stars and asked if those were the real ones. Sloane almost answered. Instead she dropped to a crouch, hastily unzipped the nearest bag, and pulled out a blue thermos. The moment it cleared the zipper she looked surprised, then caught, as if the thermos had testified against her in open court. The metal was cool. The lid was the scuffed blue of a dozen ordinary mornings that no longer belonged to them in the same way.
Felix unzipped the second bag with the brisk curiosity of a man who had been married long enough to know that surprise luggage was never only luggage. He drew out a single maroon high-heeled shoe and held it up, incredulous, turning it so the terminal light found the scuff on the left toe.
"Please tell me you didn't go through the whole bag," Sloane said.
"I stopped at the third pair of shoes."
"Those are essential."
"For one weekend?"
She stood, took the shoe from his hand, and stuffed it back with more force than dignity required. Around them the terminal chimed and echoed. A child cried near the ticket windows. Someone laughed too loudly under the wreaths. A man in a Santa hat argued with a vending machine as if the machine owed him an apology. Sloane shouldered one maroon bag; Felix took the other two. They ran toward the center of the hall the way people run when they still believe schedules can be persuaded, then halted hard at the golden clock as another chime sounded over the public address.