The night the ice went out it was Connie came down for the evening feed-up and to eat with Leah and carry supper back up to Norman. Leah moving slowly around the kitchen now, cooking one-pot meals that would carry well and furnish the long nights. Connie was famished with work and mopped up two plates of pot roast with carrots, parsnips, onions and potatoes, the vegetables all showing wear from the long storage, while Leah across from her ate slowly and with tired method, as if the food were no more than sprite fuel atop an already filled stomach. Before she went off up the hill again with Norman’s food Connie stopped while wrapping the cake tin and stepped forward and said, “You look peaked. You feeling right?”

Leah shook her head. “I’m wore out. Wore out is all. Nothing’s comfortable anymore. Everything’s a job of work.”

Connie touched a hand to her brow. Held it there and lifted it off and touched her again. “I guess for a hot kitchen you feel all right. It’s much to ask, you working down here for all of us.”

Leah shook her head again. “Cooking’s all. I haven’t lifted a broom or dustrag since I don’t know when. I’m fine. Nothing like what you two are up doing. You forget, I’ve done it years past. I know. All I am is a fat tired woman gonna have a baby. Poor little old me.”

Connie grinned at her. Leah went on. “Go on. Get food up to that man ‘fore he drinks too hard at that cider.”

With Connie gone Leah washed up, using hot water from the new tank on the firebox side of the range. Then swept the kitchen and filled the stoves, here and in the parlor and the one in the front hall, the ceiling of which was punctured four times along its length with cast-iron round registers to let the heat upstairs. Then back to the kitchen and the luxury of warm water to wash herself and finally up the stairs in the dark, undressing and pulling the soft washed flannel nightdress down over herself and letting herself slowly down into the bed on her back. The second-story windows free of frost for the first time in months.