Ruth wakes up to the sound of pots clanging and the smell of bacon. Wilson is incapable of quiet cooking; it sounds like a bad percussion band rehearsing when he is in the kitchen. But she is not really annoyed. She is accustomed to this Sunday-morning noise and welcomes it as part of their weekend routine, just as she welcomes the thermos of coffee Wilson has left by her bedside, and the paper on the bed beside her, and the knowledge that downstairs her daughter and husband are cooking breakfast together.

She props up the pillows behind her and pours herself a cup of coffee from the thermos. Outside, the snow has stopped and lies nearly a foot deep, it looks like. Winter is early this year, which likely means it will indeed be a bad one, as they’ve predicted, and snowy. Isabelle will need new boots; her feet have grown since last year, evidently enough that last night she found her father’s large boots more comfortable than her own. Ruth blows on her coffee and takes a sip. She considers picking up the paper, but decides against it; she is content to sit and listen to her family downstairs: the pop of the biscuit tube being opened, the crack of eggs against the bowl rim, the whine of the oven door pulled down, a bowl being slid across the countertop, the hiss and spit of sausage in the skillet. What is missing, Ruth thinks, is the sound of voices. She never could make out what they were saying, but she used to hear the hum of voices, laughter, the occasional shriek from Isabelle as she dropped an egg or backed away from the hot splatter of sausage grease. Now the only human sound Ruth hears is the occasional murmur of Wilson’s voice. She sighs and sets her coffee down. She hears the microwave beep, the smell of burned bacon now wafting up the stairs.

Downstairs, Isabelle watches her father leave the sausage frying in its pan and answer the summons of the microwave. “Shit!” he says, pulling a smoking tray of bacon out. “Pardon my French,” he says. “I burned the bacon.” He looks at Isabelle. “Why did the bacon burn?” he asks. “I put it in for five minutes, same as always.” Already, Isabelle has taken the bacon package back out of the refrigerator and begun to peel away nine strips, three for each of them, and to lay them out on a paper towel. “Thanks, Belle,” her father says, taking the bacon tray to the garbage and dumping the burned batch in. He sets the tray down in front of her, and she transfers the bacon-laden paper towel from the counter to the tray. She watches her father reload the microwave. “Three and a half minutes ought to do it, I guess,” he says, punching the numbers in. “And the sausage is about ready, and,” he says, peering into the oven, “the biscuits should be just a few more minutes, so any time you want to do the eggs.”