The microwave is broken; the split pea will take an hour at least to thaw completely. She knocks it from its Tupperware; it thuds against the bottom of the soup pot. She turns the burner on and jabs at the soup with a wooden spoon, but she hardly makes a dent. Carrot coins that have frozen where they settled at the bottom of the plastic stare up at her now like wide orange eyes; she covers them with a silver lid.

The glass slider opens, clicks shut. Ruth can hear Wilson stamping the snow from his boots in the doorway. He comes up behind her; his lips are cold on the back of her neck.

“Lunch already?”

“It has to thaw.”

She hears his footsteps passing through the kitchen.

“Where are you going?”

The footsteps pause. “Garage.”

“Wait, Wilson!”

“I know,” he calls. “I know. The goddamn door.”

Ruth looks at the milk in the saucepan beside the soup pot; it is steaming and ready for cocoa. The back door opens. The back door shuts. Ruth shakes her head and smiles.

She stirs the milk and cocoa and turns around to gaze out the window. A path leads from the house to the apple tree, from the apple tree to the swing set, and from the swing set to somewhere Ruth cannot see from here—to Isabelle, neatly heaving snow aside with a shovel bigger than she is.

Somewhere in the garage there is a chainsaw. He’d know where, exactly, if only he’d clean things up a little, get rid of the clutter. But how often has he thought this?

His eyes scan the back wall, where a rusty saw hangs. He stands on a box to reach it; the cardboard is weak, and his foot falls through and into the box. Inside, mice have made a nest among Isabelle’s old schoolbooks, but no one is home. He pushes the box aside and reaches on his toes for the saw. He holds it up in the light streaming in through the high, boxy windows; the teeth are dull.

The power drill is where he left it weeks ago, on the floor beside a flashlight and spare hooks for the zip cord, which by now, if the wire’s even free of ice, will be too low to the snow-raised ground for riding. In the spring, he thinks. When the snow melts.