The taillights went around the bend at the end of the street and then there was nothing — just the porch light, a sprinkler two yards over, and eighteen years of a driveway that had never once been this quiet.
Mara didn't move. Neither did Tom. They'd stood in this exact spot for every departure that mattered — the school bus, the prom date, the U-Haul in June — except this one wasn't circling back for a forgotten backpack.
"That's it," he said, like the sentence needed testing before he'd trust it.
"That's it," she said back, and it came out different in her mouth than his — not an ending, exactly. Something closer to a question she hadn't decided to ask yet.
The house behind them held its light the way it always had, every window lit for a kid who was now doing seventy on the interstate with a duffel bag riding shotgun. Nobody would need the car tonight. Nobody would need picking up.
He put his hand at the small of her back, and it surprised her — not the touch, they'd touched a thousand ordinary times, but the fact that it didn't have a checklist attached to it anymore. No lunch to pack behind it. No permission slip.
She turned first. He caught the movement and turned with her, the two of them pivoting in the driveway like something choreographed decades ago and never once rehearsed since.
"I don't know what we do now," she said, and meant it as an actual question, for the first time in longer than she could account for.
"I've got some ideas," he said, and reached for the door — not the front door exactly, just the promise of it, the house standing open and lit and, for once, entirely theirs.
Behind them the sprinkler kept going, throwing its small arcs over a lawn nobody needed to keep neat for anyone's inspection now. The hallway light was on inside. Neither of them hurried toward it.