"Good. Take the late one together tomorrow, even if the conversation on it is ugly. Ugly conversations on shared trains still beat beautiful silence on separate ones. I learned that the expensive way."
Felix shook Estelle's hand with both of his. "Thank you for the hallway years. And for the terminal. And for pretending your paperback was interesting while we fell apart at half volume."
"Thank your wife for not throwing the thermos at your head," Estelle said. "And thank yourself for noticing the shoes before the marriage needed a sculptor instead of a planner." She departed toward the coat rack like a woman who had resolved her chord and was content to leave the resonance ringing.
Sunday morning arrived with leftovers, quiet, and the particular emptiness that follows a house after it has held too many people wearing perfume. Sloane filled the blue thermos at the Merriweather kitchen counter while Judith pretended not to watch and then gave up pretending.
"Your mother would have liked that toast," Judith said. She was wiping a counter that was already clean. "She had a way of making hard things sound like invitations."
Sloane's hands steadied on the lid. "Felix told you I was angry."
"Felix told me he was a fool in October. Audra filled in colors. I am not asking you to move here and become a porch ornament. I am asking you to believe that wanting home and wanting you can live in the same son without making you the villain of the town play."
"I packed an exit," Sloane said, because secrets had begun to feel heavier than scenes.
Judith nodded once, sharp. "Then unpack it in front of him, not behind him. Dale and I nearly divorced over a job in Cleveland in 1994. We didn't. We also didn't forgive each other on the drive home. We forgave each other in installments, like a ridiculous magazine subscription. You can too."
Felix carried bags to the car with Dale. Vance left a note on the hall table that said JANUARY, THEN, in block letters, which was either threat, blessing, or the world's least romantic save-the-date. Sloane put the note in her coat pocket without announcing it, not as ammunition, as documentation.
At the small North Springs station, snow had turned to a bright crust that squeaked under the maroon heels she had not changed out of, a small vanity or a small loyalty, she wasn't sure. The train south was on time, a minor miracle that felt almost rude after yesterday's theology of delay. Sloane and Felix stood on the platform with their three maroon bags and two paper cups Judith had forced on them despite the thermos, because Judith believed in redundancy the way Felix believed in curb cuts.
"I canceled the solo ticket," Sloane said.