Even though she’d slept most of the ride, Kate was exhausted. Her body ached more than she was going to let on, a dull throb in her chest. And her stomach felt as if it had folded in on itself. She knew whatever she ate was going to come right back up. Still, she was, for a change, hungry.

A few minutes in the country and I’m already on the mend, she thought with a smile.

While Andrew made round trip after round trip, Buttons at his heels, Kate got up to explore the house. She poked her head into the bedroom, the floor covered in their luggage. The room seemed small because it was filled with two double beds. The wood paneling shone like glass. A lone window had a nice view of the lake.

Just across the hall was the bathroom.

Kate was a stickler for bathrooms – she often had made them switch hotel rooms back when they could pick up and get away at will – if she spotted the slightest smudge of mold or grime. Bathrooms were a big make or break for her. She needn’t have worried today. The recently refurbished bathroom was nicer than their own in Jersey, with a brass claw-foot tub and a shower with a built-in bench that was a huge plus. All of the molding and grout work was spotless.

Kate felt the ground shift under her feet and grabbed the sink. After steadying herself for a couple of minutes, she ran cold water on her wrists, dried off, and went back to the couch. Her hip popped along the way but stayed in the socket. Andrew was in the kitchen, unloading some of the groceries she’d made him bring along.

“I’m almost afraid to ask about the bathroom,” he said, reading the label on a bottle of wine.

“I give it a gold star.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s cleaner than ours.”

“I guess technically, at least until after Labor Day, it is ours.”

She craned her neck and stared at the slatted ceiling. “I love the sound of that.”

Kate pulled a chair out from under the dining room table and sat down. Everything about the cottage screamed quaint. It was perfect, a thousand times better than she’d imagined. The maid service had done a hell of a job. She couldn’t even find a speck of dust.

“Promise me we can stay here forever?”

“You might change your mind after being cooped up with me for a whole summer,” Andrew said, checking the kitchen cabinets and finding a pair of glasses.

“I seriously doubt it.”

Buttons jumped up beside her and buried his nose in her armpit, his tail whacking her thigh. Andrew asked her if she wanted something to drink.

When she answered him, it was in a dream, the day’s excitement shifting into fragments, her body painless, weightless, flirting with bliss.

* * *