But Isabelle hadn’t seemed angry at all. In fact, she looked calm, assured—the same way she looks this morning, Ruth thinks now, looking at her again across the kitchen table. Isabelle is fixing her third cup of tea, slowly dripping honey into the liquid with a spoon. Remnant Cheerios float fat and soggy with milk in the bowl beside her. Wilson’s mother is at the stove, cooking bacon she’s found stashed in the freezer. The sound of sizzling gets louder with each strip she adds to the skillet.

“Well, the bacon may be old,” she calls, “but it still smells good!” She turns from the stove and settles at the table. “You like bacon, don’t you?” she asks Isabelle.

Isabelle looks up from her tea and nods.

“Good. Sensible girl. Your cousin Monica has taken up this vegetarian nonsense.” She shakes her head. “I keep telling Ellen not to let her, you know, one must have meat in one’s diet.” She sips her tea. The sun coming in through the kitchen window is almost blinding in her white hair. Ruth can feel the sun on her own back, can see her shadow falling with the shadows of the window sash and the shadow of the jams and jellies across the table. She picks at a mound of candle wax dried on the checkered tablecloth. She shifts in her seat. She feels left out of something, but what, she doesn’t know.

“Ruth, dear.” Ruth looks up. Her mother-in-law is buttering a muffin. The knife clatters against the butter dish as she puts it down. “I’ve got some things in the cellar you might want,” she says. “An old table for outdoors, really lovely, iron, you know, but…”—she shrugs—“it’s just sitting there, and Wilson mentioned your garden, and it might be just the thing.”

“That sounds great,” Ruth says. “I’d love to take a look.”

“And an old toboggan. I’ve no use for it, and Darryl and Ellen’s kids have several, I’m sure, and—Isabelle, do you have a toboggan?”

Isabelle shakes her head.

“Oh, well then, you must take it. Such a waste for it to just sit down there rotting. Oh!” she exclaims. “The bacon!”

The bacon does smell as if it’s starting to burn; Ruth puts her hand on her mother-in-law’s shoulder before the woman labors herself to the stove. “Let me,” she says.