“See all right?” he asks, turning his neck as best he can to look at her for an answer. She nods, her eyes fixed in the direction of the trees. He cannot see, but he knows what it will look like. He knows that the trees along the entire length of the avenue will flash on at once, that everyone will cheer, and then the crowd will begin to scatter. He knows that they will pick up a pizza on their way home, as they always do on this night, that they will eat it at the kitchen table, and that after that they will go their separate ways. Ruth will read for a bit before going to sleep, maybe, and Isabelle will draw—but maybe she will sit with him to watch a Christmas movie before she goes to bed. And then Wilson will be the only one up. He will set the coffeemaker for tomorrow morning, and he will do whatever dishes have been left undone. Not everything is wrong, he thinks, and he squeezes Isabelle’s ankles with his bare, numb hands.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO

Monday

I

Isabelle wakes up without opening her eyes. She can tell from the color of her eyelids that it is no longer fully dark outside. She hears a bus groan to a halt at the stop outside their building, and the hiss as it kneels to take on passengers. A driver leans on his horn; another driver joins in, then another, and another in an awful, dissonant chord that when it stops seems to leave the street quieter than it was before. A doorman whistles down a taxi. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm sings a melody that Isabelle knows by heart.

Her guess is that it is 6:22. She can’t remember the last time she’s woken up outside of the window of time between 6:07 and 6:26; there is something in those nineteen minutes that will not let her sleep. She opens her eyes and looks over at the clock: 6:23. A good time to wake up, she thinks; 6:23 is a pleasing arrangement of numbers, cooperative, balanced, and straightforward: six is two times three. She takes this as a good sign for the day to come.