Ruth jabs a macaroni with a fork and lifts it from the boiling water. She watches the steam rise above it as she holds it in the air, letting it cool for a minute before putting it into her mouth to test; the pasta is done. She carries the pot to the sink and empties its contents into the strainer waiting there, closing her eyes and holding her face above the steam. She cuts a chunk of butter from the stick and puts it into the pot, adds the pasta, the milk, the egg, the cheese, the salt. The little things, she tells herself. The little things. She dumps it all into a casserole dish and puts it into the oven to bake; it should be ready for lunch when Isabelle and Wilson return from the mall.

She looks out into the yard, where Maggie is lying in the snow not far from Isabelle’s snow fort. Isabelle has shoveled paths through the snow across the yard: from the porch to her snow fort to the apple tree, around the far side of the house. Despite her best efforts, and despite all of their adherence to the rules of path-walking, there are still rogue footprints here and there. Some, of course, are from Maggie. Some lead up to the zip cord Wilson set up last weekend. Others lead off into the woods, distinguished from the prints returning by the marks left by the tree they’d dragged home through the snow. Ruth suspects that Isabelle will turn those prints into a path easily enough; the tree has done half the work for her. Then there are rogue footprints that Ruth can’t account for, on the far side of Isabelle’s snow fort. She frowns. These disappear behind a stand of trees. Whose prints are they? Ruth wonders. Isabelle’s? But Isabelle of all people wouldn’t wander without a path, especially around her fort!

Ruth pulls on her boots and coat and goes outside. She pauses by Maggie, tosses her a snowball, which the dog catches in her mouth. She follows Isabelle’s path the rest of the way to the snow fort, which is more than waist high. Ruth is impressed. She touches the bricked wall; it is surprisingly solid. She takes a breath and looks at the footprints disappearing behind the stand of trees. They must be Isabelle’s; they are small enough. But what was she doing? Ruth follows the footprints behind the trees, and to her surprise they do not stop there. She follows them where they lead, beyond the trees and along the edge of the road for a while until they vanish into pavement. Ruth steps into the road, puzzled. Where had Isabelle been going?

Just then a snowball crashes at Ruth’s feet. She looks up. Thomas Dunlap looks out from behind the trunk of a tree at the edge of Mr. Sullivan’s old yard, a big grin on his face.