Free First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen

his skin and his eyes and the tiny smile on his lips. He was standing near the corner, his hands in his pockets, like he was on a summertime stroll.
    Tyler drove right by him.
    â€œWait. Did you see that?” she asked.
    â€œSee what?” Tyler asked.
    Claire looked behind her and he was gone, as if he hadn’t been there at all.
    But if that was the case, how could he leave behind that scent, like a smoky bar, now coming through the car vents?
    *   *   *
    When Tyler parked in front of their house, his wife got out quickly. She stood on the sidewalk and looked down the street from where they’d come.
    Tyler got out and locked the car with the remote, then he walked over to Claire, who was silhouetted by the light from the street lamp, her curves like a map that took him to a different place every time he consulted it. He put his arms around her from behind and bent to rest his chin on her shoulder. Her arms were cold, so he rubbed them.
    â€œWhat do you see?” he asked.
    She stepped away and turned to him. “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Why don’t you go inside and check on Mariah and Bay? I think I’ll take a quick walk around the neighborhood.”
    One side of his mouth lifted into a half smile, confused. “At this time of night? In those heels?”
    â€œI’ll just be a minute.”
    He took off his blazer and put it around her shoulders. “I’ll go with you, for protection. That Edward is a slippery one. He might have escaped and is now on the prowl.”
    Claire laughed at his reference to Mrs. Kranowski’s elderly terrier, who only prowled a few feet into his yard every day, long enough to do his business. Then he skittered back inside, where he stood at the window and barked at birds and bugs and the occasional threatening leaf.
    Claire held the lapels of his blazer together, then looked back down the sidewalk. “No, you’re right. It’s too late. Too cold,” she said, turning to walk up the steps to the house.
    Tyler watched her navigate the concrete steps slowly in her heels, her hips swaying. All the lights in the house were out except the porch light, which appeared to flutter in happiness as Claire approached. If lights could actually feel happiness, that is.
    Tyler had grown up in a manner similar to Claire’s. His parents were potters and potheads who still ran an artists’ colony in Connecticut. Their version of reality wasn’t based on anything anyone else considered normal, either. His parents fed him kale sandwiches, let him draw on their Volkswagen, often walked around nude but dressed him in ridiculous things like T-shirts that read POTTERS DO IT ON WHEELS for school pictures.
    A lot of it was embarrassing to remember, but Claire often reminded him of the better parts of his childhood, back when everything seemed possible. He wouldn’t exactly say he’d lost his ability to believe now, but his role with Claire was to be the rational one. He laughed out loud, there on the sidewalk, when he thought of that. He was spacey and forgetful and, before he’d met Claire, he’d traveled restlessly, chasing happiness like it was something he secretly believed couldn’t be caught. He’d taken a teaching position here in Bascom, North Carolina, because, like every decision he’d made up until meeting quiet Claire that night she’d catered an Orion art department party, he thought this was only the next step. He thought he would soon be on his way to someplace different, as distracted and easily led as a cat following a fly. He loved that, within their relationship, he was the grounded one. He loved that she made him something he never thought he’d been capable of being. Someone who stayed.
    Tyler snapped out of it, realizing he’d been staring into space. He saw that Claire had reached the front porch. He loped up the steps to catch her. But she crossed