Isabelle blinks. She looks at the caterpillar in her hand—whether it is hers or Phoebe’s she can’t remember—and tries to reattach it to the ceiling. It stays for a moment, and then slowly, headfirst, it peels itself away and drops down onto the seat beside her.

CHAPTER SIX

SIX

Sunday

I

They’d spent the rest of yesterday silent, the last real words uttered being good-byes and nice-to-meet-yous as the Dunlaps, large and small, made their way outside into winter’s early night, shortly after which Isabelle had reappeared from wherever she’d gone off to. They’d asked no questions.

Dinner was reheated split pea; Ruth hadn’t felt like cooking. Evidently Isabelle does not feel like cooking either this morning; when Ruth appears downstairs, Wilson is fixing Sunday breakfast alone.

He cracks an egg into the waiting dish.

“Morning,” he says, shortly.

“Good morning.” Ruth pours herself a cup of coffee. It is not lost on her that Wilson neglected to bring up a thermos as he usually does. She leans her hip against the counter, watching as he cracks another egg, then another. “Where’s Isabelle?”

“Outside.” Wilson gestures with his chin. In the far corner of the yard, Isabelle is on her knees in the snow, all around her what looks to be the beginnings of a snow fort.

“She didn’t want to do the eggs?”

“Evidently not.”

Ruth grits her teeth. “Wilson,” she says. “You have no reason to be angry at me.”

Wilson lifts an eyebrow.

“You don’t! And if you do, I want to hear what it is. I want you to explain it to me.”

Wilson begins to whisk the eggs.

“Stop it. Put the fork down.”

Wilson obeys.

“Now tell me what I’ve done.”

Wilson swallows. Ruth can see it in the lurch of his throat.

“I invited the Dunlaps to come in for hot chocolate. That’s it. And why the hell shouldn’t I? They’re our neighbors, they’re new to the neighborhood, it’s what you do.”

“Not when your daughter won’t speak! Not when she can hardly even stand the company of her own parents! How did you think she’d react, coming home to a roomful of strangers!”

“A roomful? A roomful?! Wilson, it was a man and his son, not a roomful!”

“His deaf son!”

“I didn’t know he was deaf, and what the hell difference does it make, anyway! This is our problem, this is our fucking problem—we don’t do things because our daughter won’t speak. We don’t go to the Marsh Marigolds, we don’t go to the zoo, I don’t work, we don’t have new neighbors for fucking cocoa! Maybe if we did things, things would be different. We are enabling her, and we have got to stop!” Ruth takes a large sip of her coffee; it scalds. “Goddammit!”