The taste of blood fills his mouth. The blood from his hangnail has leaked around his nail. He glances again in the rearview mirror as he sucks at his finger, and then again, this time letting his eyes linger on the mirror, where Isabelle’s own eyes have come to rest. Wilson blinks at her, and she looks back at him, and neither of them looks away until the click of the door handle unlatching sounds and Ruth, with another gust of cold, lowers herself into the car.

The drive takes almost twice as long as it should. They hit traffic from three different accidents, and taking these as warning, Wilson drives cautiously. Things have gone colorless with evening by the time they arrive, though it is not quite dark yet; beneath the cloud line on the far horizon the sky glows. Wilson turns the engine off and looks up at his mother’s house, the house that he grew up in. It looms. The upper windows are dark, but the kitchen lights are on, and the lights of the Christmas tree are on in the large picture window. He can already smell muffins toasting, can already hear the kettle’s shriek. It is almost teatime.

“Well,” he says. “We’re here.” They have been quiet for the past hour, all of them lulled by oncoming headlights and the engine’s warm murmur. In the way back, Maggie lifts herself, and Isabelle yawns.

“I’m starving,” Ruth says.

“We should be just in time for tea.”

Wilson carries their bags from the car and sets them just inside the door. It is warm inside. A small dog with ratty hair appears from the other room; she and Maggie regard each other warily. “Mother!” Wilson calls. He stamps the snow from his feet. “Maybe in the kitchen,” he says over his shoulder to Ruth and Isabelle. They follow.

The kitchen is the mess it usually is. The radio is on. There are piles of Christmas cards and catalogs on the table. Dried soup crusts a pot on the stove, and a fly buzzes around a greasy pan. A mug of coffee sits half drunk on the counter, and a gnawed slipper lies on a dog bed in the corner. A starling hops from one rung to another in its cage by the window. “Mother!” Wilson calls again. “Huh,” he says. “I thought she’d be in here.”

He wanders back into the foyer and calls up the stairs. No one answers. He returns to the kitchen. Ruth stands at the table, her hand on a newspaper but her eyes worriedly on Maggie, who has collapsed herself onto the dog bed in the corner. Her breaths seem short, labored. Ruth looks up as her husband enters, then lets her eyes fall again to Maggie, and then to Isabelle. Isabelle has squatted down before the bird, following its leaping with her eyes.

“That’s a wild starling,” Wilson says. Isabelle looks up at him. “Or it was wild. It fell out of its nest last spring, when it was a baby, and your grandmother found it.”