He gently clears his throat and glances in the rearview mirror. He can see neither Isabelle nor Maggie where they lie stretched out in the back. “I think your brother might still be there,” he says. His voice is low. He scratches the side of his head, though it doesn’t itch.

Ruth faces forward again. He sees her blink rapidly out the windshield from the corner of his eye. “You think what?” she says.

“I called to check the messages, and someone answered.”

Ruth shakes her head. “Wait a second, Wilson, what are you talking about? What do you mean you called to check the messages? I’m not following you. What do you mean someone answered?”

“The answering machine I bought this fall. You can check the messages, and I called before we left to check them and someone answered. Your brother answered. I think.”

Ruth pulls her lips over her teeth as she ponders this. “And what did he have to say?” she says finally.

“I hung up.”

Ruth grips her temples with a hand: thumb and pinky. “Are you saying you think my brother is still at the apartment?”

“I think so.” Wilson takes a breath. “But it could have been the wrong number. I could have misdialed.”

“Well, did you try back? After you hung up, did you call back?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“The machine picked up.”

“And why didn’t you say anything until now?”

Wilson doesn’t answer; he doesn’t know why. The ridges in the highway thunk beneath them, one-two, one-two, one-two.

“Wilson?”

He stares at the bumper sticker on the car in front of them. Morning Has Broken, it says.

“Wilson,” Ruth repeats, loudly.

He glances again in the rearview mirror, checking for Isabelle. “It could have been the wrong number,” he says quietly. “And what difference would it have made?”

Now Ruth is silent.

“Would we have stayed at my mother’s? It’s Christmas Eve. Of course we’re coming home.” He changes lanes to pass the car with the bumper sticker, driving quickly now.

“It’s the principle,” Ruth says. “That’s all.”

She shivers in the chill as her father rolls down the window to pay the toll above the West Side Highway. She can hear the voice of the tollbooth operator, but she cannot make out the words.

“Thank you,” she hears her father say. “Merry Christmas.”

The window whines as it goes up, and Isabelle’s ears pop in the muted vacuum of the car; the noises from outside had sounded so crisp in the cold, and clear. She sits upright for the rest of the drive to look out at the dark ice floes on the Hudson, the occasional hooded figure hunched along the river rails, the George Washington Bridge aglow, the swooping lights of its cables. There is traffic on the bridge tonight. It goes both ways.