“you coming to bed?” sarah said. There was nothing in her voice that said she wanted me there for any other purpose than company. These days, Sarah definitely didn’t want to sleep alone.

It was after midnight; our guests had left several hours ago. Trixie, as I mentioned, had to work, and Earl left much earlier than planned. I had retired to my study, and was sitting at my desk when Sarah appeared in the door, leaning, one hand propped up against the frame. She was in a long nightshirt featuring a big picture of Snoopy in karate garb.

“Soon,” I said. I had a folder in front of me, stuffed with newspaper clippings.

“Okay,” she said, and turned to go.

“I heard you tell Trixie,” I said, and she stopped, “that we might be going away. For a trip.”

Sarah said nothing for a moment. “I guess I did.”

“Were you just saying it, or would you like to go?”

She pressed her lips together, ran her hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I think, sometimes, that I would. I let myself stop being mad at you for a while, and I like the idea. And then I get mad again, and stop thinking about it.”

I nodded. I sat there, and she stood in the doorway, and about a minute went by.

“What if I could get our house back?” I said.

“What?”

“What if I could get our old house back? Move back into the city.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about moving. Back into our old neighborhood. It might, it might not be the same house. Not the exact same one. But something in that neighborhood, on Crandall, or maybe a street over. We could shop at Angelo’s again, and you could get cannolis, and the kids could go back to their old school. It would be like we never lived out here at all.”

Sarah bit her lip and looked away for a moment. She took a finger and wiped at the corner of one eye.

“I could call somebody, get this place assessed, put this place on the market, see what we could get for it. I mean, we’d probably have a mortgage again, it’s going to cost us more to buy down there, but I could go work for a paper again. Cover city hall, take pictures, whatever.”

Sarah sniffed, took a tentative step into the room, then a couple more. When she was a foot away, I leaned forward in my chair and slipped my arms around her thighs, pressed my face into her stomach. We remained that way for a while, and then I said, “I’m not sure this house is a place anymore from which to make good memories. And I know we have lots more to make.”

She nodded, sniffed again, looked at the folder of newspaper clippings on my desk.