A few months ago, he had told Lil he had an appointment at Duke, yet another checkup, and that, no, he didn’t need for her to make the drive with him, she should enjoy the day, keep doing whatever it was she was doing in there surrounded by her boxes and papers, the radio tuned to classical. She said she didn’t have that appointment written down. “And I always write everything down,” she said. And then he lied and said he was sure he had told her. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. He had to look away when he saw her expression, the flush of her cheeks and the look of confusion and then irritation. He felt guilty, an old ugly pang of guilt. He had never been able to lie to her, not well anyway.

“Maybe I forgot to tell you,” he said, finding a reason to turn to the window as if he had just heard something. “All routine—pee in a cup, stand on my head, recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“That one might give you trouble.”

They both laughed, but he felt the heavy weight of her studying him.

Now, he moves quickly to the front door and out into the bright morning. The humidity is already like a wet, heavy blanket as he goes to his car and slips behind the wheel. They had laughed about living on a golf course when neither had ever played. They heard someone yell, “Fore,” and they called back, “Against.” They tried not to complain about the humidity and ugly, scraggly pine trees, especially when Becca and some of her friends were there and working so hard to help them settle in. But they have both missed the New England weather and their home in Newton.

And, no, he hadn’t missed the shoveling—not really, given all the warnings that had begun to come with it—or climbing the slick, icy steps, but they loved their house and it was hard to think about what the young couple who bought it have done—ripping out walls and the century-old radiators, blowing out the back and filling it with glass, like a huge aquarium, digging up the old hedge of lilacs to make room for a pool. Lil couldn’t stop talking about it—over and over—after their old neighbor Gloria had called to report, which, for better or worse, she had done for fifty years. A hip replacement a year ago gave Gloria more time than ever before, and Lil finally had to say that it was getting hard for her to hear these things, she wasn’t sleeping at night. The lilacs were difficult enough, but then her perennial beds, years of collecting and adding and tending, were plowed out for an outdoor kitchen and a big firepit.

“An outdoor kitchen?” Lil had asked, and reached for him to take her hand. “Why would you have an outdoor kitchen?”