Chapter 18: Get in and ride to the park
The smell of coffee and toasted bread finally pulled them from bed. Hannah moved around the kitchen in Matt’s t-shirt, her ring flashing as she scooped grounds. He watched from the kitchen table, a silent contentment in his posture that hadn’t been there for weeks.
“I feel like a fugitive,” she said, pressing the button on the coffee maker. The gurgle and drip was a celebratory sound. “A well-rested, deeply satisfied fugitive.”
“Leo’s probably calling a SWAT team to his office right now,” Matt said, stretching. The joints in his shoulders popped. “Demanding a hostage negotiator for that Johnson inventory.”
She brought two mugs to the table, sliding his across. “It’s just boxes. It’ll survive without me for a day.” She said it like she was convincing herself, but the smile stayed.
“Damn right it will.”
They drank their coffee in the slow, stolen quiet of a weekday morning. No one was expecting them. The world outside could spin on without their labor. It was a profound, simple luxury.
“So,” Matt said, setting his mug down. “What does a fugitive do on her day of freedom?”
She pretended to think, tapping a finger on her chin. “There’s a lot of laundry. The bathroom sink is weeping. I think something died behind the fridge.”
“Tempting. But try again.”
Her eyes lit up. “Soup. The good kind, from that place by the old theater. The one with the sourdough bread bowls.”
“The Brothy Cauldron.”
“Yes. And then… we walk. Somewhere that isn’t a warehouse or a parking lot.”
An hour later, they were wedged into a tiny laminated booth at The Brothy Cauldron. Steam rose from two massive bread bowls in front of them, fragrant with rosemary and roasted chicken. Hannah was already tearing the lid of her bowl into spongy pieces, dunking them.
“I dreamt about this,” she said, closing her eyes as she ate. “Specifically the bread. For three nights straight.”
“You dreamt about carbs. Not me. I’m wounded.” He grinned, slurping a spoonful of the rich, lemon-thickened broth.
“You were in the background of the carb dream. Looking supportive.”
The lunch was a slow, savory affair. They talked about nothing: a weird-shaped cloud out the window, the merits of adding hot sauce to soup, a story Matt half-remembered from a podcast he’d listened to in Wyoming. The conversation was a meandering stream, effortless. The undercurrent of the past week—the separation, the strain—was gone, smoothed away by proximity and broth.
After, they walked. The autumn air had a crisp, metallic edge, scented with decaying leaves and distant exhaust. They wandered without a route, their hands linked in the pocket of Matt’s coat.
The chaotic downtown grid gave way to the wrought-iron gates of the city park. It was a vast, rolling expanse of manicured chaos, where gravel paths wound under skeletal oak trees and around a slate-gray pond. In the distance, the skyline rose like a sharp-cut jewel.
At the park’s entrance, a line of horse-drawn carriages stood waiting. The horses, enormous and patient, stamped their feathered feet on the asphalt, their breath pluming in white gusts. A driver in a heavy coat nodded to them.
“Tourists do that,” Hannah said, slowing her steps.
“We’re tourists today,” Matt replied. He was already guiding her toward the closest carriage, a black one with red velvet cushions. “We’re touring our own city. Seeing it like we don’t live here.”
He helped her up into the high seat. The carriage shifted with their weight. The driver tipped his hat, gave the reins a gentle shake, and with a lurch and the clop of immense hooves, they were moving.
The city’s roar softened, absorbed by the bare trees and wide lawns. The pace was glacial, a rhythmic sway that forced the world to slow down to match it. The horse’s back muscles rolled beneath its glossy coat with each step.
Hannah leaned into Matt, her head on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her, his hand resting on the subtle curve of her stomach under her coat. They didn’t speak. They listened to the driver’s quiet commentary about century-old statues and stolen glances from other pedestrians. They watched a group of sparrows explode from a hedge.
Halfway around the loop, as they passed the frozen fountain, Hannah shifted. She pulled her phone from her pocket. “Proof,” she said.
She held the phone out, aiming it back at their faces. Matt looked down at her, she looked up at the lens, and behind them, the blurred park and the patient horse were a perfect backdrop. She took the picture. The shutter sound was absurdly loud in the quiet.
She examined it, a small, private smile on her lips. “We look happy.”
“We are happy.”
She took another, of his hand over hers on her belly. Then one of the horse’s ears twitching. Then the skyline framed through barren branches.
The carriage ride ended too soon. The driver helped her down, and Matt paid, slipping the man an extra bill. They stood for a moment on the path, disoriented by the return to their own speed.
“Now what?” Matt asked.
“Now we shop for utterly pointless things.”
They crossed back into the commercial streets, bypassing the chain stores for the narrow, independently-owned shops that smelled of incense and old wood. In a store crammed with geodes and vintage postcards, Hannah spent twenty minutes selecting a single, iridescent abalone shell.
“For the bathroom windowsill,” she declared, holding it up. It caught the light, swimming with color.
In a used bookstore, Matt found a water-stained field guide to Midwestern birds. “For the truck,” he said. “So I can name the things I see.”
“You’ll have to text me pictures. ‘Another fucking sparrow, Hannah. Page 42.’”
“You’ll love it,” he said, and bought it.
The last shop was the smallest, a cluttered cave of wind chimes and handmade pottery. A bell tinkled above the door. Hannah moved slowly through the aisles, her fingertips brushing ceramic mugs and woven baskets. Then she stopped.
On a low wooden shelf sat a small figurine, maybe four inches tall. It was a dog, but not a graceful one. It was lumpy, hand-painted in a sloppy brown and white glaze, with one ear cocked higher than the other and an expression of profound, cheerful idiocy. It was terrible. It was perfect.
She picked it up, a laugh bubbling out of her. “Matt. Look.”
He came over, peered at it. “That’s… a dog?”
“I think so. It’s trying its best.” She turned it in her hands. “It reminds me of that cartoon you like. The one with the dim-witted hound.”
“We’re buying it.”
“It serves no purpose.”
“It’s purpose is to be ugly and make us laugh. That’s a high purpose.” He took it from her, carried it to the elderly woman at the counter. The woman smiled, wrapped it in tissue paper without comment, and placed it in a small bag.
Back on the street, the late afternoon light was long and golden. Their shadows stretched ahead of them. Hannah carried the shopping bag with the shell and the awful dog. Matt carried the book. Her other hand was back in his pocket.
They stopped at a small bridge over a concrete canal. She pulled out her phone again. “One more. For the series.”
This time, she turned the camera around, capturing the two of them with the shimmering city behind, the water below. Their faces were wind-flushed, their eyes crinkled. She looked at the picture, then up at him.
“Today,” she said, her voice quiet but clear, “is the day I’ll think about when things are hard. This exact day.”
He didn’t argue. He kissed her forehead, right there on the bridge as people streamed past. “Then let’s get one more thing to remember it by.”
He led her to a corner vendor, bought two pretzels the size of dinner plates, dusted with coarse salt. They ate them walking back toward their neighborhood, tearing off huge, doughy chunks, not talking, just eating and walking and being together in the cooling dusk.
By the time they reached their apartment door, the sky was deepening to indigo. They dumped their acquisitions on the coffee table. The tissue-wrapped dog, the shell, the book. Artifacts.
Hannah plugged her phone into the speaker, started a playlist of soft, wordless music. She sank onto the couch. Matt went to the kitchen, came back with two glasses of water.
He sat beside her. She immediately curled into him, lifting her legs across his lap. He picked up her phone, swiped to the photos from the day. There they were: smiling in the carriage, their hands, the horse, the terrible dog on its shelf, the skyline, their final selfie on the bridge.
He scrolled through them slowly. A documentary of joy. A quiet, ordinary, spectacular day.
Hannah watched the images pass, her body growing heavier against his. The music played. The awful dog figurine, freed from its tissue, watched them from the table with its lopsided gaze.
“Tomorrow,” she murmured, her eyelids sinking.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, his voice a rumble in his chest.
But for now, in the dim room lit only by the phone’s glow and the streetlights filtering through the blinds, they had everything they needed. The proof was right there in his hands, a dozen captured moments, solid as stone.
The proof was right there in his hands, a dozen captured moments, solid as stone. The phone’s screen went dark, plunging the room into deeper shadow. Hannah’s breathing had evened out into the slow, warm rhythm of near-sleep against his side.
His own stomach growled, a loud, empty sound in the quiet. The pretzel felt like a lifetime ago. The physical reality of the long drive and the day of walking settled into his muscles as a dull, hungry ache.
“I’m getting hollow,” he murmured into her hair. He gave her legs a gentle squeeze and began to shift out from under them. “Gonna scare up some food.”
She made a soft noise of protest, her limbs tightening briefly like a vine. Then she relaxed her grip. As he stood up, her hand shot out, fingers curling into the fabric of his henley at his waist.
She pulled him back down.
Not with force, but with a sudden, sobering insistence. He bent, bracing a hand on the couch back beside her head. Her other hand came up to cradle his jaw, her thumb stroking the line of his cheekbone. Her eyes were wide awake now, searching his in the half-light.
She kissed him.
It wasn’t a goodnight peck or sleepy affection. It was deep and slow, a deliberate pouring of the day’s unspoken gratitude into a single, lasting point of contact. He could taste the salt from the pretzel, the faint sweetness of her lip balm, the essence of the cold air still lingering on her skin. Her fingers pressed into the short hair at the nape of his neck, holding him there, translating everything they hadn’t said aloud into the language of pressure and breath.
When she finally released him, they were both a little breathless. She sank back into the cushions, a soft, satisfied smile on her swollen lips. She patted his chest twice.
“Go,” she whispered. “Fuel the machine.”
He stood, slightly unsteady. The room felt charged, the air between them crackling with the aftershock of that kiss. He watched her reach for the remote on the cluttered coffee table, her movements languid. She aimed it at the television, and the screen blazed to life with a muted commercial for floor polish.
The glow painted her profile in shifting blue and white. The mundane noise of the TV, a salesman’s earnest drone, filled the space he’d just vacated. She drew the afghan over herself, her attention already captured by the flickering images, but the ghost of her smile remained.
It was an anchor. A perfect, ordinary command to continue. He turned and walked the twenty steps to their kitchen, the domestic noise at his back, the taste of her still on his tongue. He opened the fridge, and the cool light spilled out, a new pool of illumination in their shared, continuous night.