“It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

“Sure.”

“I wonder if the kids will get the day off.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe work will be closed, too.”

“Yup.”

“Then maybe we can all go down to the park or something. You know, as a family. We haven’t done anything like that in a while.”

I raise my eyes from my newspaper, folding the top slightly so my husband comes into view. “Is this conversation going somewhere?”

He shrugs. I go back to reading my paper.

Three pages later, he speaks again. “I dug up some of the flowers in the backyard earlier, the ones the deer ate back in September.”

“Mhmm.”

“The tree in the backyard hasn’t been looking too good lately.”

“It’s winter.”

“I was thinking I might dig it up and plant something else in its place.”

“It’s fine, it’s just hibernating.”

He’s quiet for a moment before he continues, “isn’t that the tree you planted when your last husband died?”

“Yeah.”

“Where was he buried again?”

I sigh, folding my newspaper and setting it on the table. I trace the edge of my placemat mindlessly, not meeting my husband’s eyes. “He was cremated,” I say. All of these questions are making my stomach churn and I push away from the table to get a glass of water.

“How did he die?”

“What’s with all the questions?”

I hear the rustle of his shirt as he shrugs again. “Just curious.”

“He fell off a ladder while cleaning the gutters.”

The loud churning of the ice machine momentarily silences any conversation.

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I say. I pour the cup of ice I had just filled into the sink and place the cup upside down in the drying rack.

“Alright,” he says, picking up my newspaper and flipping it open. “I’ll be there in a little bit.”

I place a kiss on his cheek as I pass him. His jaw is scratchy with stubble. When I finish in the bathroom, I leave his razor and the bottle of shaving cream next to his sink.

About an hour later, I feel the bed shift as he slides in next to me. “Goodnight,” he says.

“Goodnight,” I say.

He waits until he thinks I’m asleep to slide back out of bed. He doesn’t bother to close the bedroom door behind him.

I watch from the kitchen window as he begins to dig at the base of the tree. I always thought it was interesting that the grass there had grown back a slightly different color after the first time I had dug it up.

“It’s too bad,” I say to myself as I pull the butcher’s knife from the drawer. “I actually quite liked this one.”

The next morning at breakfast, my oldest son sits across from me, eating a bowl of dry cheerios. “Where is daddy?” he asks around a large mouthful, some crumbs falling onto the table.

“He had to go,” I tell him. “Now hurry and finish your breakfast. We can take the sleds down to the park in a little bit and take them down that big hill they have over there.”

“The one right next to the street?”

“Yes, that one.”

“I heard Billy say the other day that if you go down that hill fast enough it’ll launch you clear across the street, straight over the cars and everything.”

“Maybe we can try that. But you have to finish your breakfast first.”

As I clean the dishes, I look out the window to the backyard. A layer of snow covers the ground, smoothing out the landscape. It won’t melt for a few months, and by then, the new grass will have grown in and the tree will look healthy again.