"Nine o'clock," she said. "After dinner. Before Midnight Mass. Use the side door, by the trash cans. Don't come up the driveway. Don't ring the bell."
"I won't."
"My mother doesn't—" she started, and stopped.
"I know," he said again, and this time she didn't ask how.
He went up the walk toward his mother's house, toward the long-distance aunt and the card table and the cigarette smoke, the snow already filling his footprints. At the door he paused and looked back at her, standing at the curb in her ruined boots with her arms full of silver and red.
"Lena," he said. "Your coat."
"I know where my coat is," she said.
He smiled, briefly, and went in.