They’d still need only one car, the mortgage was less than what they’d been paying in Cambridge, and they’d practically be in the country, away from it all. Hen could have her own studio that was walking distance from home, and Lloyd could take the commuter rail-the station was also walking distance -into Boston for his job. The converted mill was one of the reasons that Lloyd and Hen had picked this location. Dartford was a well-heeled commuter suburb forty-five minutes from Boston, but West Dartford, separated from the rest of the town by the Scituate River, had smaller houses spaced closer together, all built for the workers from a long-defunct mill that had recently been turned into artist studios. Sporadic gusts of wind ripped at the plastic tablecloth, weighted down with bowls of pasta salad, chips, endless hummus and pita. “I apologize in advance if it’s awful,” he said. I’ll come,” she said, and Lloyd turned from the bookshelf, smiling. It’s a favor.” She occasionally resented the word and the way Lloyd used it, but she also understood that it was reserved for times when Lloyd thought it was important. In the past, it was how he sometimes roused her from the bed in the morning. “What if I ask you to come with me as a favor?” Favor was an unacknowledged code word between them, a gambit Lloyd usually used only when Hen was unwell. The furniture was all in the right rooms, paintings were hung on the wall, and Vinegar, their Maine coon, had started to occasionally come up from the basement where he’d been hiding.
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