Back in early 2020, before the sky fell, my then girlfriend (now fiancée) and I were bound for a rental shaded by palm trees—until a series of furloughs upended our plan. Unbeknownst to us, COVID-19’s fallout had placed us on an immutable track that looped back, with sickening velocity, to my mom’s house in the Berkshires. The ingredients for disaster were quickly stacking up. For starters, Tatiana had never lived outside of Florida. And before we met, I’d been bouncing around the country, never staying in a new place for more than a couple of years, give or take. How…
