They stand in silence. Ruth looks at Wilson. He knows she does not believe him; he is not good at telling lies. He doesn’t, he realizes, even have a briefcase in his hand.

“Maggie is sick,” he says finally. “I took her to the vet.”

“Sick?”

Wilson nods. As he had feared, the utterance has made the illness real, too real.

“How sick?”

“The cancer spread,” he says. “It’s all through her lymph nodes.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me? You weren’t going to tell Isabelle?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“What do you mean you didn’t want to worry us?”

“She has a chance. She needed another round of treatment.”

Ruth has stooped down now to put her face in Maggie’s fur as so often she sees her daughter do. She thinks of how small Isabelle’s hand had seemed when she grabbed it to leave the art class today, and how before they’d left Ruth had found Maggie and her daughter asleep beside the Christmas tree. She pictures Isabelle’s face across the table from her at the coffee shop, the way she had given Ruth half her cocoa, the way she’d put her fingers to her lips in a way that seemed to Ruth the gesture of a kiss more than a command of silence, the sad smile that is so rare these days, that will never be again, she is sure, if Maggie dies right now. This cannot happen; Maggie cannot die. Ruth lifts her face toward Wilson, worry eclipsing her anger at his secrecy. “You’re right,” she says, and she stands. “No worrying.” She clears her throat and says, loudly, “Do you have those papers?”

“What?”

“The papers you came home for. Do you have them?”

Wilson nods uncertainly.

“Good, well. Pork for dinner tonight, so don’t be late. And bring some ice cream, will you? Coffee.”

“Okay,” Wilson says. Ruth leans over to peck him on the cheek, and then she goes inside. Wilson stands for a minute more in the foyer, his hands heavy at his sides. He does not want to go back to work; he is tired, and he does not want to go back out into the cold. But he has to, he knows. He has to finish this day as he would any other, so he lifts his hand and rings again for the elevator.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EIGHT

Thursday

I