Marcus shook his head. "This is the whole ugly cathedral. Job. House. Lie. Simone. Moving day tomorrow. That's the inventory."
"And if I say no?" Nia asked. "If I say we fight the sale, we call lawyers, we ask my mother for money, we refuse the smaller life?"
"Then we might keep this blue house for a month and lose both," he said. "The buyers' deposit is in. The bank signed off. Pulling out now isn't pride. It's damage."
Simone appeared at the end of the hallway, Amara's hand in hers, then released it when she saw their faces. "I'll take Amara to see the backyard," she said. "Call when you want us."
They went. The back door opened and closed. Nia and Marcus remained on the floor of a house that was almost theirs and almost a stranger's, while the house they loved prepared to become someone else's tomorrow afternoon.
Nia did not speak for a long time. In the quiet she could hear Amara outside naming the fence posts as if they were soldiers. She could hear a distant freeway, that California constant, a river of other people's errands. She could hear Marcus breathing beside her like a man who had been holding his breath for three months and had only just remembered lungs.