She turns slowly toward him, eyes still heavy with sleep but sparkling with mischief. “Some idiot asking if the road is clear between here and Chicago,” she says. “How would I know? I’m not the weather girl, and I’m definitely not driving out there to check.” Her husband blinks, trying to process the absurdity of someone calling their house, at 2 a.m., for traffic conditions two hundred miles away.

Then it hits him: the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The dark room fills with their laughter, the kind that comes when you’re too tired to stay annoyed. The tension melts, replaced by a shared sense of “Did that really just happen?” Long after they’ve turned off the light, they lie awake, replaying the moment, bonded a little tighter by one bizarre, late‑night call and the perfect, cutting line that ended it.