Eli handed me two twenty-dollar bills.
I took one of them. I handed the other one back.
“Buy her a treat,” I said.
He looked surprised. “Ma’am, you don’t have to—”
“I know,” I said. “I want to.”
He and his friend lifted the couch. It took them three tries to get it through the front door. The sagging middle scraped against the doorframe. The patched armrest caught on the screen door.
As they carried it down the porch steps, I almost asked them to put it back.
I stood in the doorway with my hand on the frame. The words were right there in my mouth. Wait. I’ve changed my mind.
I didn’t say them.
Mila waved at me from the back seat of the pickup as they pulled away. She was holding her bunny up to the window so it could wave too.
I waved back until the truck turned the corner.
Then I went inside and looked at the empty space on the living room carpet. There was a rectangle of darker carpet where the couch had been for twenty years, untouched by sunlight.
Kate came home from the store an hour later. She looked at the empty space. She looked at me.
She didn’t say anything. She just hugged me.
That night, for the first time in six months, I slept in my bed.
