Nora watched him through the snow. She watched Mrs. Pruitt get out of the car and stand there in her lavender coat with her hands on her hips while he unbuckled the turkey from the front seat. She watched them go up the walk together, the small woman and the tall man, and she watched Mrs. Pruitt stop at the bottom of the back steps — the steps, Nora thought, where she'd lain for an hour — and look at them for a moment before she went up, holding the rail, very slowly. Cal went behind her with the turkey and did not touch her and did not hurry her. He just stayed one step below, close enough to catch.
Nora had seen men do that before. Her father, on the stairs of their house when her grandmother came to visit. One step below. Close enough to catch.
When Cal came back he had something wrapped in a dish towel in his hands, and he was shaking his head.
"She gave me a jar of bread-and-butter pickles," he said, handing it to Nora as he climbed in. "And told me to tell you that she meant what she said. About the hair."
"She didn't say anything else?"
"She said you should come tomorrow." He put the truck in gear. "She said I'd invited you, and that a fireman's word is a fireman's word, and that the station will expect pie."
"I have twelve relatives coming," Nora said.