It started with rain and a bowl of pasta.

Not romantic. Not planned. Just a Tuesday, ten days before the end, and Ethan coming home at seven with that look he'd been carrying lately. The one I didn't have a name for yet. Less certain than his usual expression. Slightly unmoored, like a man who'd started questioning his own directions.

I was in the living room with my book. He stopped in the doorway, still in his coat, and looked at me on the sofa the way you look at something you'd expected to be different.

"You're home," he said.

"I live here," I said. "For nine more days."

Something...