Isabelle nods. Exhaust fumes and cold air waft into the car as Ruth gets out and hurries in only her shirtsleeves to the bathroom. Wilson cranks the heat and pulls at a hangnail with his teeth. The trip to his mother’s as planned would have been short enough; to come all this way for only a night seems absurd, almost a waste. He feels rushed—there are things he wants to be sure to do. He wants to show Isabelle his old things, the stuffed animals and toys still in the upstairs closet, and he wants to have a bonfire, maybe, and he wants to ice-skate on the river, and he wants to have tea and boiled eggs and English muffins with his mother when it’s teatime. But by the time they get there, the weekend will already be half gone. He shouldn’t have agreed to this change of plans, he thinks, but then again, when he’d walked in the door last night and seen Ruth’s face as she sat across from Jimmy at the kitchen table, the tired, plaintive look she’d given her husband, a look that seemed to say, if nothing else, please, and help, he had been filled with a sense of responsibility and without question stepped into the role he knew was expected of him.

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.”