By ten o'clock it was over. Twelve relatives, one by one, had fallen like dominoes in the snow.
Nora stood in her kitchen in her robe. On the counter were the sweet potatoes and the single can of cranberry sauce and the jar of Mrs. Pruitt's bread-and-butter pickles. On the windowsill, in a row, were four pies.
She looked at the pies for a long time.
The house was so quiet she could hear the clock on the stove, a small electric whir she normally never noticed. She could hear the snow sliding off the roof in soft rushes. She thought about spending the whole long gray day in this kitchen with the radio and the pies and the china she wouldn't need, eating a sweet potato standing up at the sink. She thought about her mother in the front hall in the dark, waiting by the telephone. I had my one. I'm not greedy.
And she thought about a man in a suede jacket leaning on the roof of her car with snow in his hair, saying, Bring pie anyway. In case.
"This is a terrible idea," she said to the kitchen.
Then she went upstairs to get dressed.