They live in hotels for a while, after he does that to her face. Not real bad, but bad enough for them to leave the same night. Frantically packing the car as though hoping to outrun some unknowable natural disaster. There’s sand in the bed, Baby, he’s saying. Back at the house, a million years ago in the suburbs. And she won’t tell him why. She’s letting him believe things. There’s sand in the bed, and they are a long way from the ocean.

He tucks a blanket around her shoulders and they drive for three hours, past the bedroom communities in the west, his hand on her thigh and the radio on. When he speaks it’s as though he is speaking to a child he hopes to befriend, and she answers as a child might, imagining her child-self running down the dark stretch of highway alongside the passenger window of their white Hyundai. Pushing her breath out ahead of her, never tiring. Never turning her head to meet the eyes of the passenger, who is unravelling a loose thread from her skirt and saying, no, I don’t suppose work would miss me for a little while.