“Are you kidding? He loves going to Mr. Bean’s house.” Mr. Bean was their closest neighbor, and his name was actually Mr. Beade; Grant had come up with the nickname, saying he looked like the TV character. She couldn’t tell him that it was Nevada she was afraid of, not snowstorms, and that she’d rather starve here than go there.

“I’ll think about it,” she lied.

After they ate, Grant cleaned up while she went down to her studio. It was an industrial space with heated concrete flooring and the same floor-to-ceiling windows that the upper levels boasted. There were doors to two adjacent rooms: one that she used for her office, and the other held a full-size bed that she crashed in when she worked late nights. The area was large, and there was also a garage-door entrance, which allowed her to get her larger pieces in and out easily. She was working on a sculpture for a private commission, a beehive using wire as its base. She stepped over the mess she’d made earlier in the day and walked briskly to the little windowed room that held her desk and computer. There wasn’t much privacy in there, and at any moment Grant could walk into her studio and see her through the glass, but he hardly ever came down, saying he wanted to give her space. She sat down at her desk and only then did she allow herself to feel what she’d been holding in. It was as if balloons of anxiety floated in her belly, bloated and ready to burst at any moment. She bent over her desk until her cheek rested on the cool surface and waited for the feelings to pass, breathing deeply as tears ran in a steady stream down her cheeks. She felt frozen, unable to navigate through the maze of emotion that had taken over.

“It’s over,” she said, her voice husky and thick with tears. “You’re gone from that place and that time.”

Rainy hid in her studio that night, plugging her earphones into her ears and turning up her music until it was time for bed. Then, in an exhausted zombie shuffle, she walked the three flights of stairs to their bedroom and fell into a dreamless sleep until morning.