Her relief transformed into the sudden understanding that Matthew looked truly nervous. She knew he was disturbed by her unpredictability since the mugging, and it occurred to Sarah that he was perhaps not actually optimistic and centered, the way she’d always assumed. Maybe, contrary to what she and the old foreign man from the subway had agreed upon, people don’t actually change, and Matthew was still the young man she’d met when she was twenty years old, the one who’d been—up until right before they’d met—unable to speak in public. Maybe her husband was so agreeable and said yes so often not because he was magnanimous and hardworking but because he was driven by fear.

She brought her hand to Matthew’s cheek.

He shook his head. Then he unlocked the car.

She watched him buckle his seat belt. Her husband. She watched him turn the key in the ignition. They followed Arman and Kiki’s Honda. Part of her wanted to ask him to keep on driving. To drive past Kiki and Arman and Sylvie and never see them again. They could try somewhere different, something new. But she’d done that before—both with and without Matthew—and she understood now there was no such thing as new enough.

five

SUNDAY EVENING

When they climbed the steps of the porch, there was the same humid air as the previous evening. They’d arrived from the city in the same spot just over twenty-four hours before, and it felt as if time had become tangled. Sarah realized that she’d seen this weekend as some kind of test, as if the past were no more complicated than an exclusive club, and by reconnecting to Kiki and Arman, they might gain some access.

But in the aftermath of the day’s outing, feeling both disappointed with herself and dizzyingly unmoored, she had what felt like a presentiment: Kiki and Arman would refuse to answer the door. No matter how much Sarah and Matthew knocked or how long they stood there, Kiki and Arman would turn up their music and ignore them. They would or wouldn’t send out their bags. She could easily picture Arman doing a sweep of the guest room—tossing most items in the trash and the choice ones in a box for the basement. He and Kiki had been stoop-sale pros when they’d lived in Brooklyn, and Sarah pictured her soft cotton pants on a hanger with a sticker, her gold hoops displayed near the cashbox on a scarf-draped folding table.