If Bev had said something kind and useless instead of something true.

If I had let the first reach drop when Hal said sure, if you want. We would have missed it, and the worst part, the part that keeps me up, is that we would never have known we missed it.

That is the quiet horror of a drift: the couples it takes do not feel themselves being taken.

They think this is just how it goes after forty years, this dignified distance, this peace.

They never find the shoebox.