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He carves the liver into slices, dresses them with fried onions, and brings the plates to the table. Now Em finds herself not just hungry but ravenous. They eat at first without talking much, but as their bellies fill and they slow down, they speak—as they often do—of the old days and those who have either died or moved on. The list grows longer each year.

“More?” he asks. They have eaten a good portion of the roast, but there’s still plenty left.

“I couldn’t,” she says. “Oh my goodness, Rodney, you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

“Have a little more wine,” he says, and pours. “We’ll save dessert for later. That show you like is on at nine.”

“Haunted Case Files,” she says.

“That’s the one. How bad is your sciatica, dear one?”

“I think a little better, but I’ll let you clean up and do the dishes, if you don’t mind. I’d like to go through the rest of those writing samples.”

“I don’t mind at all. The one who cooks must be the one who cleans, my grandmother used to say. Are you finding anything worthwhile?”

Em wrinkles her nose. “Two or three prosaists who aren’t downright terrible, but that’s damning with faint praise, wouldn’t you say?”

Roddy laughs. “Very faint.”

She blows him a kiss and rolls away in the wheelchair.

2

Later—the timers along Ridge Road have turned off all the subdued Christmas lighting—Em is engrossed in Haunted Case Files, where tonight’s psychic investigator is mapping cold spots in a New England mansion that looks like a decrepit version of their own house. She feels a bit better. It’s too early to feel real relief from the liver and the wine… or is it? That loosening in her back is definitely there, and the shooting pains down her left leg don’t seem quite so vicious.

The blender has been going in the kitchen, but now it stops. Roddy enters a minute later, bearing two chilled sorbet glasses on a tray. He’s changed to his pajamas, slippers, and the blue velour robe she gave him for Christmas last year.

“Here we are,” he says, handing her one of the glasses and a long spoon. “Dessert, as promised!”

He sits down beside her in his easy chair, completing the picture of a couple who has often been pointed out on campus as a good—nay, perfect—example of romantic love’s ability to endure.

She raises her glass. “Thank you, my love.”

“Very welcome. What’s going on?”

“Cold spots.”

“Drafty spots.”

She gives him a glance. “Once a scientist, always a scientist.”

“Very true.”

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.

3

Eleven days before Christmas, Emily Harris walks slowly but steadily up from the mailbox at 93 Ridge Road. She climbs the porch steps with a fist planted in the small of her back on the left side, but this is more out of habit than necessity. The sciatica will return, she knows that from sad experience, but for now it’s almost totally gone. She turns and looks approvingly at the red bow on the mailbox.

“I’ll put the wreath up later,” Roddy says.

She startles and looks around. “Creep up on a girl, why don’t you?”

He smiles and points downward. He’s in his socks. “Silent but deadly, that’s me. How’s your back, dear one?”

“Quite good. Fine, even. And your arthritis?”

He holds out his hands and flexes his fingers.