The blinking started as a tiny itch in the corner of my wife’s eye. We were two nights into a long weekend, half-asleep on an unfamiliar mattress, when Pilar sat up and whispered, “Why is the smoke detector flashing?” I dragged a chair over, unscrewed the plastic dome, and felt my stomach slip. There it was: a tiny lens where there shouldn’t be one. We didn’t argue. We packed like people fleeing a fire—chargers yanked from walls, toiletries tossed as-is into a tote, zipper teeth grinding over clothes that didn’t belong together. Ten minutes later we were in the car...
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