A Very Good Year to Leave

How it begins

Judith Lane packed seeds. Peter packed adapters for countries they had not agreed to visit.

The suitcases stood beside the cottage door, facing slightly different directions.

"We should book something before the prices rise," he said.

Judith held a packet of runner beans between two fingers.

"Something is a remarkably broad destination."

They had sold the house in March. By April, their friends were calling them brave. By May, Judith had begun to suspect bravery was a label people used when they hoped you would explain a decision they might someday have to make themselves.

Now it was June, and the borrowed cottage smelled of lake water and old pine cupboards.

Peter spread a map on the table.

Judith looked through the window at a neglected bed beside the fence. There was room for beans, if someone repaired the supports. A red chair leaned against the shed, missing one slat.

She could imagine an entire summer there with embarrassing ease.

"The train goes through three capitals," Peter said.

"The beans need nine weeks."

He looked up.

For thirty-eight years, they had managed decisions by allowing the person who wanted something most loudly to describe the sensible version. Judith had not considered this unfair while they still wanted approximately the same things.

Peter moved the adapters away from her seed packets.

"You don't want to go."

"I don't want to leave immediately. That's a different sentence."

Outside, a bird attempted the same three notes and kept finding a fourth. Judith waited through two attempts before realizing Peter was watching her.

"If we stop," he said, "I'm afraid we'll never begin again."

She set the seeds on the map, not as an argument but because the table was small.

The packets covered a railway junction neither of them had planned to notice.

"Then perhaps," she said, "we should talk about what beginning means now."

Peter pulled out the second chair.

For once, there was nowhere they needed to be before the conversation ended.