That was the first day she remembers experimenting with silence. She had cried and cried when she’d looked into the squirrel’s box beside her bed, not because the squirrel was dead—she’d expected that—but because of how it had all happened, the senselessness of it, how it was just a squirrel, looking for nuts on the roof one day, then the next day toothless and bloody and terrified, and then the next day dead in a shoe box by a girl’s bed. But how could she explain that? What was there, really, to explain? Silence had been easier.

Upside down, her brain begins to tingle and her vision starts to pix-elate. She blinks once, twice, and then she sits up and rubs her eyes. She pulls her covers back and steps into the slippers she’s left on the floor by her mattress, opens her bedroom door, and walks softly down the hall, past her parents’ room, and down the stairs.

Ruth hears her passing footsteps. She waits to hear the whir of the fan that comes on with the bathroom light, the gentle clink of the toilet lid raised; instead, she hears Isabelle descending the stairs. She opens her eyes and waits until she hears the footsteps reach the ground floor and fade down the hall until she gets out of bed herself and follows. She is cold in her silk nightgown and bare feet, but she doesn’t pause to find her robe or slippers. The stairs creak; she knows from Isabelle that to walk quietly she must put her weight on the edge of the steps, where they give less. She presses her body against the wall and makes her way slowly down. Halfway she pauses. The hallway downstairs is cast in a dim glow from the closet light. She watches the blurred shadow of her daughter on the hallway floor and listens to her rummage. After a minute, she hears Isabelle’s footsteps again, slower now, and heavy. Ruth watches her pass by the foot of the stairs to the porch door.

Isabelle wears Wilson’s warmest down parka over her nightgown, and a pair of his boots with feet as long as her shins. She’s put on the fur hat Wilson brought back from a business trip to Russia and Ruth’s fleece-lined leather mittens. One of these she takes off for a minute to grip the door handle, then she steps outside into the snow and pulls the door quietly shut behind her. Ruth descends the rest of the staircase and hurries to the door, worried that Isabelle might have already vanished into the darkness. But when Ruth looks out through the door window, she sees by the porch light that Isabelle’s footprints lead only to the steps that lead down to the lawn. Isabelle sits there with her chin in her palms looking out into the darkness, snow collecting already on her head and shoulders.