“You give him bacon?” Alice hisses as Lil drifts to another table.

“Just a strip.”

Alice adds a little sugar to her cup, stirs it with a back-and-forth motion. “What else would you do in the summer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time we took one of those vacations we always talked about. Drive to the Cape or up to the mountains.”

“We don’t have to wait till summer to do that. There’s nothing says we can’t go somewhere now.”

Another reminder of his unemployed status. All the time in the world.

Ed aligns his coffee cup in its saucer. “What would we do about Buddy?”

“There’re lots of places that are calling themselves dog-friendly. We can take him.”

“Where do you want to go?”

Alice shrugs, takes a bite of her sandwich, and sits back. The bench seat is so low, she looks like a little kid sitting at the grown-ups table. “Canada? Someplace we can drive to. Montreal?”

“All the more reason to look at a new car. Neither one of our clunkers could handle an eight-hundred-mile drive.”

This is fun, this optimistic conversation. It’s been so long since they’ve talked about anything having to do with planning, or adventure, or life beyond being lost parents, that Ed feels like laughing. It might not even be necessary to go on a vacation; it’s just a step in a new direction to talk about it. It’s a sign to him that Alice is moving out of another stage of her grief. From never leaving her bed to never leaving the house to never leaving Moodyville, Alice is contemplating a journey out of the country. Ed is fairly certain that she will begin to worry about who will take care of things while they’re gone, a train of thought that will eventually derail these happy plans when she considers being absent from the graveside for more than a couple of days. Summer, winter, whatever the season, whatever the weather, Alice Parmalee tends the grave. Chrysanthemums in the fall; impatiens in the summer; greens in the winter. The tulip bulbs poking up in the spring, flanked by daffodils. He’s never seen it, but he knows what Alice plants. Sometimes it’s the only thing she tells him in a day. Or it was, until Buddy came along.

So, it’s quite nice to have her talking about going somewhere else.