That’s us, he had explained, unnecessarily.

Going on our trip.

We’re still going to go, right, Mom?

They were.

She had promised him Madrid and she was going to give him Madrid, in the summer, the long way, on a flight she fully intended to sleep through.

She understood, arranging these three things in a cedar box, that she was doing a kind of accounting, the only kind that had ever come naturally to her.

Here is what the night cost, the box said, and here is what it gave, and here is what survived.