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.”

Isabelle turns back to the bird and puts her finger through the bars of the cage to touch his tail.

“It can speak,” Wilson goes on. “He can say his name. Gilbert.” He crouches beside Isabelle. “Gilbert,” he says. “Gilbert. Gilbert. Gilbert.” The bird pauses and cocks his head. “Gilbert. Gilbert.” Wilson takes a breath. “Oh well,” he says. He stands.

“Where do you think your mother is?” Ruth says. She has lifted a Christmas card from Wilson’s brother’s family from the table. “We haven’t gotten this one yet,” she remarks.

“I don’t know,” Wilson says. “I thought she’d be here, but”—he looks at his watch—“she could still be with the horses.”

“The horses, Wil? I thought you’d gotten someone to do that for her.”

Wilson shakes his head. “I had.”

“And?”

Wilson shrugs. “The woman ‘didn’t understand the horses,’ according to my mother.”

“Well, maybe you ought to go down there,” Ruth says. “It’s icy, you know, she could fall and break her hip again.”

Wilson turns to Isabelle. “Do you want to go see the horses, Isabelle?” She looks up from Gilbert and nods. He turns to Ruth. “Shall we?” he says.

“You go,” she says. “I’ll stay here with the dog. Maybe I’ll start tea. Your mother is going to want tea, isn’t she?”