“Careful, Belle!” Wilson calls, turning around anxiously. But already Isabelle is safely at the bottom of the stairs, her breath white and fast in the air around her. Her parka is not done up, and the laces of her boots are not tied, but Wilson hesitates before saying anything more. It is unlike Isabelle to have her laces undone and her coat unzipped; there is something wonderfully childlike about such neglect, something lighthearted that Wilson cannot bring himself to check, and so he says nothing.

They cross the driveway to the station wagon; Wilson gets in the driver’s side and watches through the glass as Isabelle struggles with the frozen door handle on the front passenger side. He leans across the seat and opens it for her from the inside, and then he watches as she gets in; she sits down before swinging her feet in, and she is small enough that she has to lean back out of the car to pull the door closed. She buckles herself in and then turns to Wilson as if to say that she is ready to go.

He drives slowly; the road is icy. But he is glad to drive slowly; it is beautiful, and the mall is no place to rush to. The trees that line the road are tall and thin; their limbs are heavy with snow and their branches glossy with a layer of ice. Off in the woods, Wilson sees a couple of deer grazing the snow, their heads to the ground, and he slows the car to a crawl. “Look, Belle, deer,” he whispers, as if the deer could hear him. He holds his arm near Isabelle’s face and points, so that she can follow his arm with her eyes to where the deer stand, alert now, frozen and staring. “See them?” he asks, and Isabelle nods.

After a minute, Wilson sees in the rearview mirror a car coming down the road behind them, and so he speeds up; at the sound of the revving engine, the deer startle and bound away through the trees, the white undersides of their tails glowing against their tawny hides. Isabelle lets her eyes linger in their direction, turning around in her seat so that she can see as the car moves farther down the road; finally, when the car has rounded a bend, she turns around and switches the heat on full blast, leaning forward in her seat to hold her hands over the vents, something Wilson has taught her to do.