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and hollowed out by a throng of snow angels. Tonight, the only imperfection in its flawless surface is the paw prints of a lone squirrel.
    I ring the bell once more. Finally, footsteps. Light pours down on me from overhead, and the front door opens a crack. I half expect to see the end of Daddy’s shotgun, but a pair of round wire spectacles peers out at me.
    “Mom, it’s me.”
    “Catharine?” The door swings open, and Mom is standing there in a maroon velour robe and slippers. She unlocks the storm door and pushes it open. “What on earth are you doing here?”
    “I wanted to see you.” I force the heartache and confusion from my voice and punctuate my sentence with a smile.
    She moves aside to let me in, eyeing me suspiciously. “Why didn’t you call?”
    I stomp the snow off my boots and step inside. “I thought I’d surprise you.” I drop my overnight bag at the foot of the staircase and pull off my boots. Barbara Walters’s voice echoes from the family room. I must’ve interrupted one of her specials.
    She crosses her arms and peers at me over her glasses. “Is everything all right?” Her steely gray hair is sticking up in random places, and I wonder if she’d been asleep in her recliner.
    “Everything’s fine.” I slip out of my coat and hang it in the hall closet.
    I doubt she’s buying it, but she doesn’t push further. “Are you hungry?”
    My stomach grumbles, reminding me that I haven’t had dinner. “Starving.” I follow her into the kitchen and plop down at the table.
    She opens the old white icebox, pulls out a plastic container, and holds it up. “Chicken dumplings?”
    “Mmm.”
    She dumps the cold soup into a pot and clicks on the stove. The coils snap and glow red. My eyes dart from the dark brown oak cabinets to the faded yellow countertops to the golden sunbursts on the floor. I swivel back and forth in the green vinyl chair, simultaneously thankful for my updated kitchen back in Lowville and the lack of change here.
    “Did you get a lot of snow in New York?” she asks over her shoulder.
    “It’s knee deep.” I think of my own front walk and driveway, which Paul snow blows religiously; another welcome diversion.
    “Work is good?”
    I think of little George and a grin tugs at my lips. “Yep.”
    “How’s Paul?” Her tone is cautious.
    “He sends his love.”
    She clicks off the stove and ladles the soup into a bowl. When she sets it in front of me she doesn’t look convinced. “What’s he up to this weekend?”
    I ignore her curious gaze and blow on the soup before I spoon it into my mouth. “Working.”
    She scowls and gives in, accepting that she’s not going to get to the bottom of whatever brought me here. Not tonight anyway. “Speaking of work, I had lunch with some of my old nursing friends.”
    “That sounds nice,” I say, grateful for the change of subject.
    “You know, five out of six of us are widows.”
    I frown when I realize where she’s going with this.
    “You’re darn lucky to have Paul.”
    “Yes, mother, I know.” I don’t have the heart to tell her that my marriage is hanging on by a thread or that I might as well be a widow since Paul and I barely even speak to each other anymore.
    She turns to the sink and washes the pot and ladle, leaving me to my soup and my thoughts. Knowing she’s not going to get another word out of me, she says goodnight and disappears down the hall. I hear her turn off the television and lights in the family room and then climb the stairs to her bedroom.
    Sitting here in the empty, unchanged kitchen, I can’t help remembering the old days, when Daddy sat to my left, chewing his food and listening quietly as Mom, who sat to my right, complained about the abortion debate that Roe v. Wade had sparked and the ongoing war in Vietnam. “Well it’s official,” she’d say every night when the three of us sat down to dinner, “the world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” My legs would wiggle restlessly under