“I don’t think we’ve ever spent Christmas Day in the country before.” Wilson looks into his soup bowl as he speaks. He scrapes with his spoon at the green streaks of split pea still left.

“No.”

“It’s nice to be here, though.”

“It really is. Better than being cooped up in the city. Easier just to be,” Ruth says. Through the window, she can see Isabelle outside, at work on a path from what was the apple tree to the woodpile at the edge of the woods. The day has lost its brilliance as it’s passed, but the sky is still blue. “I should probably get her nose looked at, though. Don’t you think?”

Wilson shrugs. “Your brother seemed to think it wasn’t broken.”

“True,” Ruth says. “But still.” She sighs. “You know, I’d almost feel better if he’d greeted us with a gun.”

She feels Wilson’s gaze.

“I would,” she says. “Then at least I’d feel somewhat justified, sending her after you like that. I’m not sure exactly what I was so afraid of.” She shakes her head. “But dinner? He greets us with dinner?”

“But how would you know that, Ruth?” Wilson says. “I mean, after last week.”

They watch their daughter shoveling.

“What matters,” Wilson says, “is that she spoke. That is what matters.”

“Yes,” Ruth says. “She spoke for you. And who knows if she will again.” She swallows. “I’m going to have more soup. Do you want more soup?”

Wilson shakes his head. Ruth puts her spoon beside her bowl and her napkin onto the table, but she doesn’t get up.

“She didn’t speak for me, Ruth. She spoke.”

They are quiet for a minute. Wilson blinks into his bowl. “Maybe I will have more soup,” he says. He gestures toward Ruth’s bowl, but she shakes her head. He brings his own bowl into the kitchen. “It’s bubbling,” he calls. “Should I turn it down?” He waits for a response, but hears none. He fills his soup bowl, scooping up as many of the carrots as he can.

“I turned it down,” he says when he returns to the table. He puts his napkin onto his lap. “It was bubbling.” Wilson seeks Ruth’s eye. “And she sounded like you,” he says. “She did. Her mother’s daughter.”

Ruth smiles, holds his eye for a minute, and then looks away. Wilson follows her gaze toward Isabelle, halfway along to the woodpile. He offered to help her shovel this path, but she turned him down.

“She played the piano this morning,” Ruth says.

“Isabelle?”

Ruth answers with a look.

“What did she play?”

Ruth settles her chin into her hand. “Beethoven.”

Wilson blows at a spoonful of soup.

“The Moonlight Sonata. The one they always played at the Plaza when my mother would take her there for tea. Remember how she loved it?”