Wilson bursts into the kitchen from outside, where he has started to load the car. “Crates ready to go?” he asks.

“They are,” Ruth says, not turning from the orchids to face him, though she can see a reflection of him in the glass of the window above the plants. “You left the door open,” she says.

“Well, I knew I was coming right back out,” Wilson says, “and that I’d have my hands full.”

“Still lets the heat out,” Ruth says, bending over to clip a dried sheath.

“Right,” Wilson says. She hears him lift one of the crates she has packed with food to bring back with them to the city. She sets her clippers down and picks up the watering can, trying to remember at which orchid she left off in her watering in order to tie up that spike. She hears him leave the room and go outside; she listens for the sound of the door closing, but she doesn’t hear it. She shakes her head, feeling the draft around her ankles. She puts the watering can down and goes down the hallway to shut the door herself, but just as she gets there, Wilson is coming inside.

“The door?” Ruth says.

“I was coming right back in. That was thirty seconds.”

“Yes, but the heat.”

“We’re leaving anyway.”

“Well, the orchids aren’t. And I need to get them watered before we leave, and we need to leave if we’re going to make it back in time for the lighting, so just do me the favor of shutting the door behind you so I can do what I need to get done.”

“Fine, Ruth,” he says, exaggeratedly pulling the door closed behind him. “Is your bag ready to go?”

“It’s upstairs.”

Wilson turns to the staircase; Ruth returns to her father’s orchids. Her orchids, she corrects herself, but she will always think of them as her father’s orchids. She remembers his greenhouse when she was growing up, the earthy smell of it, how she had helped him each summer to carry the plants outside and hang them on the branches of a tree—just as Isabelle helps Ruth do the same now, she thinks, and she wonders if someday Isabelle will be the one to water and feed these orchids.

The watering can is almost empty; Ruth brings it to the sink to refill. She hears over the sound of running water Wilson’s footsteps on the stairs and then in the hall. She turns the water off so that she can listen for the sound of the door, and again, she hears it open but she doesn’t hear it close.