I took in the big old white elephant of a house. The massive dumpster on the side lawn. The turquoise and white canned ham trailer out back, just visible under the stars.

John turned off the radio, then the heat, then the ignition. He leaned over and gave me a kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I said.

He kept his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll have to do date night more often. Maybe even upgrade it from a plumbing supply store to dinner and a movie next time.”

I rested my hand on his hand. “Do you ever worry that we might have made a huge mistake buying this house? I’m having the hardest time picturing how we’re going to get through this whole renovation and come out the other side of it still getting along. And even if we do get through it, my family is still going to be my family, you know? And they’re always going to be around.”

John’s car door opened with a click. “If you didn’t want to buy this house, you owed it to us to say that. There were plenty of other paths we could have taken.”

“All I meant was—”

John’s door clicked closed again. His back was ramrod straight. “I know exactly what you meant. Every time things get the least bit challenging, you’re looking for an out. House, partner, whatever. I think the real problem is that you’re not fully committed to the house. Or to me.”

“Where did that come from?”

John looked at me. “And I quote ‘Whatever happens, you can thank me for that.’”

The good vibes of a moment ago were completely gone. It was like as soon as the radio stopped playing, we’d crash-landed on a new planet.

“I am fully committed,” I said as I kicked the car door open. “To sleeping on the couch.”

Okay, so sleeping on the living room couch was not my most genius move. It was definitely a step up from the plaid couch in the cat room, but not a big step. Decades of crumbs were quite possibly sleeping there with me, tucked between the cushions, just out of reach of the infrequent pass of a vacuum cleaner.

It was even possible that a hamster had taken up residence deep within the upholstery, since when we were growing up one had tragically escaped in the living room, never to be heard from again. Her name was Hamburger, which we all thought was a hilarious name for a hamster, and she was golden and adorable and loved to climb into shirt pockets. After we’d torn the house apart looking for Hamburger to no avail, my brothers and sisters and I had continued to leave out tiny pieces of her favorite foods for years—sunflower seeds, carrots, broccoli—the remains of which might all be sharing the living room couch with me now, too.