They eat dinner in silence broken only by the clacking of chopsticks and the clink of glasses set back on the table after a sip. A few times, Wilson tries to start a conversation, but he goes unanswered.

“Good lo mein tonight,” he says once.

“I heard we might get a big storm next weekend,” he says later. “So much snow so early in the winter!” But his voice sounds loud to him, too loud.

When it seems as if everyone has eaten all they will, Wilson stands to clear the table. The white paper boxes of Chinese are all more than half full, still. He closes them one at a time and puts them in the refrigerator. Isabelle clears the plates and puts them in the dishwasher unrinsed. Wilson is always reminding his wife and daughter to rinse the dishes before putting them into the machine, but tonight he says nothing. Ruth sits at the table, swirling the last drops of wine in her glass.

“Should we do the tree?” Wilson suggests.

Ruth looks up. “Why don’t you guys do it,” she says. “I’m just exhausted tonight.”

“No, if you’re too tired, we’ll wait. We’ll do it tomorrow night.”

Ruth shakes her head and takes her last sip of wine. “It’s okay,” she says. “Really. It’s better if the two of you just do it.”

Wilson gives his wife a questioning look, and she nods as if to reassure him. “I’m just going to head to bed.” Wilson and Isabelle listen to her footsteps fade down the hall. They look at each other.

Isabelle stands small in her pajamas. She is pale, and Wilson thinks she must be hungry; she had no breakfast and barely touched her dinner, so all she’s had today is some macaroni. She’s wearing a pair of slippers that Wilson gave her last Christmas, huge, pink things shaped like pigs. He tries to imagine the sound of her voice, but to remember sound is not the same as hearing it, just as the memory of pain can never be as painful as the pain itself. Soon, he thinks, someday, this silence will be only a memory. He smiles sadly at his daughter.

Isabelle smiles back, though there is nothing, really, to smile about. Her mother has gone to bed at eight thirty instead of decorating the Christmas tree, and the lines around her father’s eyes seem deeper than they ever have before, and she knows she is the cause of it all.