“Yes,” Wilson says, and he does remember, vaguely.

“I’m not sure how she managed to learn it. Or when.” Ruth reaches over and spoons up a bite of Wilson’s soup. He pushes the bowl toward her, so that it is between them. A carrot coin surfaces in the soup.

“She’s almost made it to the woodpile,” Ruth remarks.

Wilson turns to the window. There are three paths that end at the apple tree now, one from the house, one from the swing set, one from the woodpile. The stump of the apple tree he has carefully smoothed out. “It was one hundred and three or four or five,” he says. “Somewhere around there. I lost count.” The stump looked better jagged, he thinks now, but it had been somehow important that he be able to count the rings.

He turns back from the window. Ruth is looking at him. She doesn’t say anything. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

She watches as he opens the sliding door and steps outside, no hat or coat. He follows the path that leads to Isabelle, whatever words he says made visible as white puffs in the air. Isabelle sets the shovel down and follows her father back down the woodpile path and onto the path that leads around the house to the driveway, out of Ruth’s sight.

Ruth lifts the spoon out of the soup bowl, puts it back. She gazes at Maggie. In a minute, she hears the back door open and Wilson and Isabelle stomping the snow off their boots. “I’m closing the door!” Wilson calls. She hears his footsteps going upstairs, Isabelle behind him.

Upstairs, on his dresser, neatly wrapped, is the black box from last weekend, the necklace that Isabelle chose for her mother inside. Wilson forgot to bring it back to the city last weekend, and he is grateful to have something to give Ruth today, to make her smile. He picks it up and turns around. Isabelle’s eyes glisten with cold. “Ready?” he says.

She nods. He offers the box to her, but she shakes her head; she wants her father to bestow the gift. She follows him eagerly downstairs, to where her mother is sitting at the table, not eating the soup in front of her. Isabelle wants her to eat that soup, wants her to smile.

“Merry Christmas,” Wilson says.

Isabelle watches as her mother carefully unwraps the small box, neatly folding the square of wrapping paper and setting it aside in the way that Isabelle would. It is more satisfying, in Isabelle’s opinion, to open gifts this way, to relish every step, though to watch her mother work so deliberately is frustrating when she so badly wants her mother to get to the thing inside.