Isabelle returns with a box of devil’s food cake mix, the icing, and the jam. They already have the eggs and oil at home. She puts the icing and the jam with the other jars—peanut butter, pickles, and pasta sauce—in the child seat, but then she pauses when she goes to put the box of cake mix in among the other boxes down below. She stares into the cart, then slowly, deliberately, puts the Triscuits and raisin bran back into their original positions. She finds a spot for the cake mix and looks Ruth hard in the eye. Ruth feels herself blushing. “Isabelle,” she says. She wonders if she should make up an excuse: she was just reading the backs of all the boxes as she waited and must have put them away wrong, she thought the yellow of the Triscuits box would look better beside the red of the Cheez-Its box than the purple of the raisin bran did. “I’m sorry,” she says, but Isabelle is already headed in the direction of the check-out lane.

Wilson is staring into the flames and listening to the hiss and pop of the wood when he is startled out of thoughtlessness by the sounds of his wife and daughter returning with the groceries. He turns around. “My goodness it’s getting cold!” Ruth says, bustling inside, her arms full of bags. Isabelle follows, carrying bags of her own.

“Is there more in the car?”

“There is,” Ruth says. “But we can leave it in there. It’s all coming back to the city with us. I’ve brought everything we need for now and everything perishable in, I think. I hope.”

Wilson nods.

“But what you can do,” Ruth says, setting her bags on the counter, “is put the stuff you left in the driveway back into the garage. Because it is supposed to snow, we just heard on the radio.”

“That’s right,” Wilson says. He’d forgotten about his unfinished project.

“And take your time,” Ruth says, holding up the cake mix while Isabelle is in the fridge.

“Right,” Wilson says. “Of course.” He heads through the kitchen, giving his wife a kiss on the cheek and his daughter a kiss on the top of her head as he passes.

“You’re probably going to want a scarf and hat!” Ruth calls after him. “They’re in the box on the top shelf of the closet!”

Wilson goes outside without these things, though in the time he’s been inside it has gotten colder, and dark, too. Wilson rubs his hands together and lugs all that he’s left in the driveway back into the garage. He tries to arrange it all neatly this time—organized clutter is better than random clutter, he figures, and he’s meant to take his time.