By the time I was done eating, we’d discussed all the safe things, things that could not be tied directly to me: my early obsession with Jane Austen; Al’s preference for the Brontë sisters, particularly Wuthering Heights; and the importance of reading The Elements of Style.

I tipped generously, despite my limited funds, remembering what it was like to be just starting out.

Outside, I breathed in the restorative mountain air, feeling better than I had in a long time. There was something about Al, the way she could look at her future with such hope and possibility – the world of writing her proverbial oyster – that gave me hope, too. Maybe she wouldn’t make the same mistakes I had; maybe at least one of us would wind up with a different sort of fate.

The sidewalks were still teeming with people, and as I walked down the block, toward the real estate office, where Jennifer Moon had told me to drop off my rent payment, I found myself trying to separate the locals from those just visiting.

Tattooed couple with a French bulldog and tattered jeans: definitely up for the weekend.

Older woman dressed almost exactly like my neighbor Maggie, in a nubby sweater that was oversize, cozy, and probably a little too warm. Likely a local.

Ms Moon’s office was closed. I tucked the sealed envelope into the locked letterbox, per her instructions, then gazed at the fliers taped in the window. All the lives you wished you could live, like Sylvia Plath’s figs: a Frank Lloyd Wright–style ranch, nestled against a creek; an 1820s mansion, six bedrooms and desperate for a renovation; a one-bedroom cottage on Overlook Mountain. Once, I had dreamed of all this with Davis. We’d stalked Trulia, looking at places all over – in the Berkshires, the Catskills, the Shawangunks, the Poconos. ‘The mountains are calling, and we must go.’ We never got up to Woodstock, though. Too hippie, too artsy, he’d argued. Too full of itself. I never told him that Ellie and I had been once, years before he moved to Brooklyn, that I’d secretly loved it. Would he figure it out?

I briefly imagined him reading my email, grabbing the coatrack, bashing it into the walls. Finally losing it on someone – something – other than me. Then I imagined the alternative, and I rubbed at the back of my neck, turned to keep going.

As I did, my body slammed into something. I caught my breath and looked up to see a man, hair long and silver. He reeked of cigarettes. ‘Sorry,’ I said quickly, as his eyes bored into me. ‘I didn’t mean to –’

‘Watch where you’re going,’ he scoffed. And then, as he passed me, under his breath but loud enough for me to hear: ‘Fucking weekenders.’