The differences in the brothers’ personalities were harder to pin down. They had separate lives—separate jobs and cities—but if you transplanted one with the other would their reactions be any different? There was no way to know. It seemed to Karen that Tom was more polite. He held doors for her, allowed her the space to walk ahead of him should they meet a narrowed sidewalk. He apologized for interrupting and quieted others so she could be heard. He looked at her with interest. These aspects were probably not actual variance, however, but just the things that tended to fade over the years, within a marriage.

“Look!” said Tom, pointing to the arched window at the front of the room. “It’s snowing!”

Karen looked. Flurries of white flew past the glass. The city was quiet outside, but she could hear a distant siren somewhere, the meow of a sad stray cat. She could hear Tom’s neighbors through the wall behind her, preparing dinner in their own house, the thuds of other people’s noisy children dashing up and down the stairs.

Tom departed to the kitchen to give the turkey a last baste and Karen followed. “I’ll help,” she said, hoisting herself up. Above the sofa was a rectangular mirror framed in gold. Karen caught sight of herself for a moment—her hair flat from her winter hat, her complexion dull and pale, the matching gray shadows under each gray eye. She didn’t look old yet, but she could see what she would look like later, when she was old, when all the shadows deepened.

The kitchen was small, a little yellow space at the bottom of the house, lit up blindingly bright by fluorescent bulbs. Tom stood at the strip of counter space watching a thermometer in the turkey rise. Karen had only intended to offer to help carry out plates and flatware, but instead she wrapped her arms around Tom, feeling the soft flannel of his shirt and the pearly buttons running up the front, feeling the beginnings of a pudge developing where his taut belly used to be, feeling the hard edges of his hip bones near the waist of his corduroy pants. The pudge attracted her most. It was a sign of time passing, outward evidence of the decline she felt. The softness drew her hands there soothingly; the softness telling her decline was a gentle thing, gradual, supple even; it wasn’t going to hurt her. She breathed in the scent between his shoulder blades, pine soap and turkey fat. She dropped her hands as Tom turned around slowly. His eyebrows were furrowed, but he was smiling. “Karen?” he said.