The children were with my mother, which is a sentence that contains a whole erotic life if you have not had a weekend without small hands on you in three years. I am Ana. I am thirty-eight. Pedro is forty, my husband, the man I still love and had started to schedule. We drove to Campos do Jordão on a Friday with a bag each and the nervousness of people who have forgotten how to be alone in a room that locks.

The pousada was all wood and a fireplace someone else had lit. No cartoons under the door. No monitor glowing. Pedro put the bags down and looked at me as if I were a woman he had met and liked the look of, which was so rare and so welcome I felt my throat tighten.