"Did that just happen?" he said.
Nora lowered her own hand. She looked at the empty corner of the freezer case, where the frost still held the shape of the bird, a perfect turkey-shaped hollow in the ice. Then she looked at him, at his snow-darkened shoulders and his ridiculous, solemn mustache, and she heard herself say, "Room for one more at the firehouse?"
He considered her for a long moment, the way a man might consider a fire he hadn't decided how to fight.
"Bring pie," he said.
And then it was over for both of them. It started in her, a little hitch of breath she tried to swallow, and then it was out of him, a short helpless bark, and then the two of them were standing at the back of Kessler's Market laughing so hard that Nora had to put a hand on the freezer case to hold herself up, and the boy with the mop stopped mopping to stare at them, and the cold air smelled of floor wax and frost and the laughter went up into the fluorescent lights and rang there, foolish and bright, the first real laugh she'd had in a very long time.
*
When they could breathe again he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand and said, "She's going to drop it on the ice. A bird that size, an old lady like that. She's going to go down and break a hip."
Nora was already moving. "Come on."