Rozie Lowry stared down at the ground where the last of her lunch oozed outward, mixing with the gravel and dirt. She was painfully aware of the muscles that throbbed around her enormous belly. Acid burned her throat. Painfully aware of Dom tapping on the steering wheel in time with the rock music. The tempo of his impatience. And the trucks roaring behind her on the freeway. She was painfully aware of the ‘little cock-blocker’ kicking the inside of her ribs, like retaliatory aftershocks for the violent upheaval that her nausea inflicted. She glanced down. Thank God. At least she didn’t piss herself again.

  “Twenty minutes to Sour Lake,” Dom said. His tone alluded to the fact that she had made him veer across two lanes of highway in order to spare the upholstery. He swept a finger over his phone mounted on the dashboard. The whiny annoyance was back. The winsome father of her unborn child. He confessed last month that the idea of parenthood was still too abstract for him to process. A checklist of furniture building, electrical outlet covers, and fresh coats of paint. She wanted him to embrace it. She understood it wasn’t real to him yet, standing there brushing his teeth, watching her shower, her body swelling to make room for another. The image of the small pile of unread fatherhood books on their dresser came to her mind. She shoved the image away and grabbed a wad of napkins from the stash in the door compartment.

  There had been clues about what to expect this weekend. His nostalgia kick had been in full swing, digging all around their house for the last week, dumping the boxes they shoved into the closet to make room for the nursery. That Hemingway novel. His ancient, long-buried CD case. Albums that brought back long-buried memories of high school and college. She cringed as she massaged the distended muscles along her sides.

  He got to keep his coupe. She traded in her compact. He wouldn’t go for a minivan, so they compromised on a crossover. It didn’t even have a CD player.

  One of his ostrich-leather boots tapped in time with the emergency indicator. The ones he wore when schmoozing with the international partners. Hr claimed it put them at ease, that they were working with Texans, not Americans. Sour Lake. Is it a big enough town for a Starbucks? The thought of a peppermint mocha danced through her head for the first time since the end of the first trimester, when nothing would stay down and she craved something sweet to settle her stomach. With a generous glug of vodka. She shook the thought away and climbed tenderly back into the passenger seat. She’d alternate between lattes and martinis once Little Lowry was born.

  “Okay,” she said. “But a real stop. I need a break from the drive.”

  Dom sped up on the shoulder and returned to the highway. Rozie turned the volume down until the industrial rock falsetto was little more than consonants and bass. “Just until we get there,” she said while staring out the windshield. The vehicle lunged over the rumble strip and slid into the right lane.

  Dom had pitched the trip before one of her OB/GYN appointments two months ago. He called it a ‘reunion’. The seven of them hadn’t been in one place since graduation. Not their ten-year high school reunion, not even for the weddings.

  It was the first time he had agreed to go to an appointment. She had to stifle a laugh when she saw the awkward look on his face. The lone male in a waiting room full of women. After she checked in, he put down the Home and Garden he was glancing through. Conrad and Benny, a couple of his friends from boarding school, had opened a resort. It sounded like a new-age place with Reiki, smoke baths in the mornings, and vitamin infusions after Pilates. Conrad Burke and Benjamin Holder had partnered up to buy an inn in East Texas. According to them, the native tribes claimed the area was sacred.

  She already knew about the trip. They called Dom the weekend before. Dom normally paces when he takes calls, but he never gets quieter as the conversation goes on. When he retreated to his office, she followed and listened at the door. Not a reunion. More like a funeral for their 20s. Dom didn’t badmouth her, but she heard the eagerness. One last long weekend before they started having babies. To their credit, whoever was on the other end of the phone call—Conrad or Benjamin—insisted on spouses. Just no children. Dom cracked a joke about Rozie smuggling one in.

  “He’s quiet though,” he said, chuckling at his own joke.

  The evening sun dipped into the windshield as they continued northeast, from the gray jungle of Houston to the over-stimulating green in the east.

  They both left work early to pack, but still left later than they had planned.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Truck stop? They have nicer bathrooms, right?” Dom asked, teasing. Rozie made a face, but her husband didn’t see it. US-90 had exhausted Dom’s patience. Commuters clogged the road. It was a wonder state troopers didn’t stop them. Every time the left lane opened, she watched the speedometer rotate further and further as Dom raced past the 18-wheelers and carpools. She stared fixedly out her window instead. The spring had been uncharacteristically wet for the entire state. As a result, everything seemed like a slow war between man and nature. Jagged trees surrounded by untamed brush crept up on the houses with their carefully manicured lawns. Greenery loomed above the overbuilt brick office buildings, waiting patiently for some signal.

  Dom slowed in front of a barbecue restaurant instead, then turned into the parking lot. Rozie couldn’t tell if it was a new building trying to look old-fashioned, or old and trying to keep up. Wisps of wood smoke drifted over the establishment.

  “How about some iced tea?” he asked. She glanced at the map again. They still had thirty minutes until they reached the resort.

  “Sure.”

  At least he was trying. Dom knew she was tethered to him, pulled along in his wake. They invited her to this get-together, but it was definitely going to be about the boys. After the call, he doubled down on the nursery. He finished hanging the shelves, the mobile, and the blackout curtains.

  Humidity assaulted Rozie as she exited the car. The sun bore down, and the afternoon heat radiated up from the pocked parking lot. The landscaping across the street caught her eye. A long ranch-style house sat atop a perfect rectangle of lawn. Weeds wove through the wire fence. She followed Dom up to the door.

  The dining room was bigger than she had imagined from the outside. Crowded, but empty. Picnic tables, end to end, dominated the space, covered in red and white checked plastic. A rectangle cut into the wall at the end served as the order and pickup window. Dom went to the window, while Rozie chose a table—one of the few with chairs orbiting the huge picnic tables. So she climbed into the seat, belly pressed against the crinkling tablecloth, at the edge of the nearly vacant diner.

  The handwritten chalkboard menu offered smoked turkey, and she felt her stomach rumble at the thought. But she shoved the notion away. Somehow, Conrad Burke convinced Dante Santore to serve as the chef at the resort in one of the hottest, swampiest parts of Texas. One of her coworkers went to Santore’s first restaurant in New York last summer after reading about him in a foodie magazine. Modern simplicity with just the faintest nod to his Italian roots. She planned to stay hungry until dinner.

  At the window, Dominic exchanged pleasantries and the usual cadence of order and payment. There was a lull. She glanced back over her shoulder. Dom stood there holding the universal red plastic diner cups. He waggled the them and raised his eyebrows. A soda fountain squatted on a counter in the corner, looking like it had survived the last three economic recessions. A dignified tea urn stood next to it.

  “Just a little ice,” she said. Dom nodded as he swept toward the drink station.

  When he came to the table, they sat in silence. Besides navigation, his phone was unusually silent. Rozie made a mental note to check in with and thank Luce, his secretary, for making that possible. So she reciprocated—no phone.

  There were those franchises that marketed themselves as homegrown or local-feeling, with faux tchotchkes nailed to the walls. But this place had a legitimate history. Photos spanning at least three decades created a timeline along the nearest wall, spanning from black and white to Kodachrome to faded home printer. The decor alluded to inside jokes she could only imagine. Boots stuck to the tin-paneled ceiling as if they were walking upside down. A cowboy hat above the order window with a large, exaggerated bite taken out of the brim.

  “What are we doing here, Dom? Do you even like these guys?”

  She shocked herself with the outburst. The gritty feeling on her teeth where stomach acid attacked the enamel—and a thousand other physical discomforts that day—losing traction at work the week before their biggest presentation of the year, traveling so late during the pregnancy, all the stress and anxiety boiled over, spewing from her mouth, channeled at her husband. But she couldn’t stop herself.

  “You spent most of last year joking about Holder and Burke being found dead in the woods under mysterious circumstances, with the resort featured in some lame Halloween ghost-hunting special.”

  He let the onslaught slide. In fact, Dominic looked deep in thought. The arch of his eyebrows told Rozie that he had wondered it himself. He swirled the long straw in his drink. For once, she thought he didn’t have an answer.

  “If I’m honest, I owe them. Starting with nothing in Houston, climbing the ladder alone would have been nearly impossible. We’d still be in that apartment if I didn’t get a little help. It’s not like they pulled strings and opened doors.” He shook his head, trying to find the words. “It would have been like sitting on a dock with a pole. With them, it’s like a team with a net, catching more fish. Bigger fish.” He scoffed, probably at the fishing analogy. He hated fishing.

  Rozie was not a little surprised by the glimmer of vulnerability, something she hadn’t seen since he quit his last job three years ago, when he was pounding coffee to wake up and drowning in whiskey to fall back asleep.

  Then he smirked and said, “Besides, an all-inclusive resort experience with an award-winning chef, hunting, and hiking? On Conrad’s dime? All for the low price of being guinea pigs for a weekend?” The glimmer vanished. Dominic stared out the window, humming one of the too many punk rock songs they’d listened to for the last two hours.