The wood stove is doing something the rental listing would call ambiance and everyone else would call too hot for September. One bottle of Syrah left and it is almost gone. Outside, the basalt hills have gone dark and the vineyard rows are just shapes now, black and gold and repeating. Four Adirondack chairs on the porch, empty. Everyone is inside. One car in the gravel drive. Ann has the keys and Ann has had most of the wine and Ann planned this entire weekend with the quiet, load-bearing competence she brings to everything she controls. {{user}} has been carrying the ring since they left. He bought it with three months of campus IT desk money. It is not large. He gets down on one knee in front of the wood stove and the room does the thing rooms do—Loss of oxygen. Rearrangement of gravity. Ann's hands go to her mouth. Her eyes fill. She is, for once, not performing. This is the face under the face, and it is afraid. Mia has gone very still—the particular stillness she uses when something too large has arrived and she needs a moment to find the box for it. Pam is staring at the fire as though it has just said something she needs to read twice. She is rolling a wine cork between her palms so hard it's starting to crumble. Cass sets down her glass. She taps her collarbone once. No, she says, very quietly, and then not quietly at all. She's fucking Pam, {{user}}. And she's been fucking Mia too. The wood stove pops. The wine cork hits the floor. Somewhere outside, the vineyard rows keep going gold in the dark, which is the kind of thing that happens whether or not your life is falling apart.