Open-mouthed, she turned her face up to the falling flakes, which seemed to form twenty metres above out of thin air then whirl chaotically to the earth. Flakes landed in the divots of her eyes and melted. Flakes landed in her mouth and tasted like paper. The sky, obliterated.

She ran as far as a big oak and stopped there. Each of its bare, dark branches, down to the thinnest, topped perfectly by a shadow of white. A blue jay, icy in its colouring, took off from high up in the tree and set off a cascade, and now there was snow melting under her scarf, melting hot. The yard, before she ran across it, had been flawless but now, with the trail she cut, a trail that was all blue shadows, it looked like some cumbersome, dead thing had been dragged through the snow. She was afraid of what she was going to do.

Anouk woke a few hours later, congested, nose red. Nora had to lug her through the nebulizing, the cupping and the medication. She made Anouk porridge with raisins and a scoop of peanut butter for extra fat, and a pot of hot chocolate. All these tasks she moved through as if today were a dream, her life already unrecognizable before she’d even done the thing that was going to change it. She built a fire for Anouk because, even though she couldn’t stop the cold in her daughter’s nose, in her sinuses, she could keep her warm.

The problem was, Anouk felt fine, like any kid with a minor cold would. She wanted to go out in the snow. A pitched whine crept into her voice; she rejected offers of books or games. So Nora turned on the television. Red came downstairs long after breakfast and together they monitored her temperature, pressed on her glasses of juice and water. Anything to battle infection. They did an extra session of physio to keep ahead of the mucus building up in her lungs, and outside the snow fell so steadily that at one point the trees on the far side of the yard were obscured.

Nora watched this through the kitchen window and Red came up beside her.

‘You okay?’ he said.

‘I’m fine.’ Fine: the meanest, deadest word uttered in marriage. ‘I’m just worried about her. All this snow. What if we have to get her somewhere?’

‘We follow the steps.’

‘Maybe we should just go now. We can be in Toronto before it gets too bad and then, if we need the hospital, we’re already there.’

He put his arm around her, spoke gently. ‘Look at her in there,’ he whispered. ‘She’s watching back-to-back reruns of that show where rich teenagers fuck each other all day in their beach cabanas. She’s not even coughing.’

‘There’s no sex in that show.’

‘It’s implied.’

‘You think she gets it?’

‘No way.’

Later, Nora tucked Anouk into bed and turned off her bedside lamp. In the dark, she laid her hand firmly on Anouk’s forehead.