“Very big,” I confirm.

“It’s kind of our hot button.”

“Very hot.”

“We could explore that,” Deirdre says, with equal parts hope and desperation, glancing at the secret clock partially hidden behind the box of tissues. “We still have twenty minutes left.”

We nod politely, but when we look at each other again a spark jumps between us. My hands are already underneath the dog sling and Gary is already reaching for his jacket.

* * *

Out on the street, on a stretch of Harvard Square where, when I was growing up, there had once been three record stores, two bookstores, four coffeehouses, and a revival house movie theater but where now there’s just a big stupid CVS and yet another bank chain I’ve never heard of, we walk toward the car. There is an unmistakable bounce in our step, which wasn’t there an hour ago. Escaping someplace we don’t want to be has always given us joy. It’s the happiest we’ve been in a long time. It’s almost unseemly how elated we are.

“I’m so glad we left early,” Gary says.

“I know, right?”

“I mean, why stay? She wasn’t going to help us. She’s no Marriage Whisperer.”

“Is there even such a thing?”

We make big smug faces now, like we’ve just cut our losses by leaving a shitty restaurant without ordering dessert. Which doesn’t make sense: If we’re so in sync about leaving things we hate, how bad can our marriage actually be? Wouldn’t we both have already left if it were really that bad?

We step off a curb and a silent Toyota Prius comes out of nowhere and almost runs us over. Gary pushes me out of the way just in time. “Stupid Priuses with your stupid silent battery-engines!” he yells out after the car. “Why don’t you make any fucking noise?”

The driver rolls down his window, sticks his head out as far as it will go. “The plural of Prius is Prii, asshole!”

Gary runs into the street after the car, giving the Prius the finger. Breathless, he walks back toward me. “Massachusetts drivers. They almost kill you and then correct your Latin.”

Inside the car, I pull the harness strap of the seat belt gently around the dog and me until it clicks while Gary yanks on his seat belt and flips up the visor. In the short time inside Deirdre’s office, the sun had moved, coming in sharply now between two gorgeous maples and bathing us in an orangey-red light. “Not to mention the bad shoes,” Gary adds, an endnote to his rant. “Another fifty minutes we won’t get back. Or, actually—” He looks at his phone screen. “Twenty-four minutes. A new record.”

As Gary starts the car and slowly pulls into traffic, I stare out the window, hugging the dog like a big stuffed animal. Autumn, my favorite season, has always made me sad—the brightness of the sky and trees, the promise of hope and renewal always feels like a trick, an invitation for disappointment, instead of a gift. Now I feel the creep of regret. Maybe we made a mistake leaving early. Maybe, this time, we should have stayed. I think of Deirdre’s fuzzy clogs and remember the similar pair I bought my mother when she first got sick, when everything became about comfort and softness and compassion. There was so much pain, so quickly; even the skin on her feet hurt.