In the guest room closet we found the jar of adventures. The glass was dusty, and the folded scraps inside had faded along their creases. I tipped them onto the floor before I could stop myself. There were plans for hiking, concerts, a pottery class, a winter weekend in Vermont, and a train trip neither of us had ever booked. Nolan picked up a note written in his handwriting: Learn to cook one meal neither of us has tried. He smiled faintly and said, "We did that one." He meant the terrible homemade dumplings that had fallen apart in the pot, leaving us laughing on the kitchen floor with flour on our socks.
I found another note: Dance in the living room for no reason. It was mine. I couldn't remember the last time we'd done it. The easy explanation would have been to say adulthood had stolen our spontaneity, but I knew now that people could create small acts of attention in almost any ordinary day. We had been offered chances, and I had declined many of them while waiting for something more impressive. Nolan let me keep the jar. "It was your idea," he said. I told him it had been ours. He nodded but didn't argue, and the glass felt heavier in my hands than it should have.
At the end of the afternoon we sat on the back steps, the same steps he had repaired before the cookout. The hydrangea leaves had browned at their edges. Nolan asked whether I had decided where to live once the house sold. I told him I was looking for an apartment above a bakery on a quieter street closer to work. He said that sounded good. I almost asked him if he'd come see it when I moved, then remembered that he wasn't a visitor I could invite casually into the next chapter of my life. Instead I asked if he wanted the small framed picture of us at our first apartment. He looked at it and told me to keep it if I liked. I said I would.
"You used to be so certain about us," I said. The words slipped out before I could examine them. Nolan rested his forearms on his knees. "I wasn't certain because I thought nothing bad could happen," he said. "I was certain we would tell each other when something was wrong." He glanced at me. "I could handle you falling out of love, Brielle. It would have hurt, but I could have handled an honest conversation. What I couldn't handle was being made a fool of while I was still trying to stay." I wanted to protest that I had never thought of him as a fool. Then I remembered my own laughter.