"Don't compliment my anger into something tidy."
"I'm not. I'm admitting I heard it."
A burst of laughter came from the ticket line—someone's delay had turned into an accidental reunion. Sloane felt the opposite of reunion: the long, precise distance of two people who shared a lease and a last name and still managed to keep separate emergency plans. She thought of Eloise again, not dying, not the hospital, but alive at a kitchen table grading papers with a red pen and telling Sloane that love without candor was just hospitality.
"If we get to North Springs and Vance makes a speech at breakfast," Sloane said, "I need you to interrupt him. Not for drama. For us."
"I will," Felix said. "Even if my voice shakes like a junior planner at a zoning board."
"Your voice never shakes at zoning boards."
"Then it'll be a new experience. I'm collecting those this month."
For a few minutes they performed the ordinary miracle of married people in public: sipping, watching strangers, letting the noise of the terminal fill the spaces where harder sentences wanted to live. A man in a navy parka argued softly with a ticket agent about connections that no longer existed. A teenager slept upright against a duffel, mouth open, one earbud dangling like a failed plan. Near them, an older woman in a plum coat sat with a small suitcase and a paperback, glancing occasionally at the same North Springs board with the calm of someone who had outlived several delays and expected to outlive more.
Felix nudged Sloane's shoe bag with his boot. "Three pairs."
"You said you stopped at three."
"I did. I'm circling back for the closing argument."
Sloane wrapped both hands around her cup. The oat milk sweetened nothing that needed sweetening, but the heat helped. "Rehearsal dinner. Ceremony. And a spare."
"A spare," Felix repeated. "You packed a contingency plan for your feet."