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imagining herself on a trip to the Holy City, a trip she knew she would never take. She imagined herself on a steep rocky coast in Italy, all the old castles and the hot sun, hot and dry. Easy on the bones. Lots of wine and everyone suntanned.
    Outside it was not quite as dark as normal, the storm clouds carried light from the town. She thought she'd seen her son coming up the road. Maybe she'd just imagined it. You're turning into an old lady, she thought, you're going a little bit crazy. It was either tragic or funny. She decided it was funny. She was annoyed at her son—they were out of firewood and she was wrapped under two blankets and it wasn't so much to ask, keep the wood split and the house warm. It was okay to be angry about that. It wasn't as if they were going to freeze, there were electric baseboard heaters but they cost a fortune, it was out of the question to run them. The best thing would be installing propane or oil heat, but she hated living in a trailer and for years she'd been hoping to move out of it. Buying a real furnace, sinking money into the trailer, was like giving up. It was better to be cold. She got up and went to the window, looking through her reflection, but nothing was moving in the road or the field, just the quiet emptiness that was always there. She had never expected she would live in a trailer, never expected she would live in the country.
    She looked back at her reflection. Forty- one and her hair had gone mostly gray, she'd stopped dying it when her husband moved out, to spite him or herself, she didn't know, but she'd put on weight, too, it was bunching up under her chin. She'd always been a little heavy but it had never showed in the face. It seemed to her that even her eyes were going dull, burning down like old headlights. Soon enough she would have the kind of face you saw and could not imagine as anything but old. Cut the pity party, she told herself. You could take care of yourself a little better. She was right to let Virgil come back. Virgil would not have let the stoves sit empty.
    As for Virgil, she had her hopes but it was getting not to matter—the ones her age, if they had jobs, would stay around a few weeks, months at most. Each time she'd gotten her hopes up and each time it'd spoiled, they all wanted to be taken care of, for dinner to appear in front of them, it should have been a joke but it wasn't. Half of them didn't even put any effort into sex, you would have thought there'd at least be the dignity of that, but not even. At the library she'd signed up for an Internet dating service, but all the men her age were looking for women much younger, and even in the bars it seemed there was nothing for her but the fifty- and sixty- somethings, men expecting to screw women they could be the fathers of. So at least Virgil was coming back. Yes, she thought, now that it's convenient for him, quiet little mouse that you are.
    The snow was beginning to fall harder and she saw someone moving at the edge of the yard, drunk, she thought, playing around, pissing his name in the snow while the stoves are out of wood. Years earlier, just after Virgil left, she'd gotten a job offer in Philadelphia and she'd nearly taken it but Billy was doing so well in school, playing football, and she'd still had hopes that Virgil would come back to her quickly. She knew what that life would have looked like— thirty- five, apartment in the city, night school, single mom—like a movie. She would have married a lawyer. Finished her own degree. Instead she was living in Buell in a trailer with her spoiled child, man, whatever he was now, her son who had nearly had everything, a football scholarship, but had decided to stay home with his mother, going hungry if she didn't cook his dinner. She wondered why she was in such a bad mood. Maybe something was happening.
    She decided to go out to the porch. Her feet got cold and wet but it was beautiful outside, it was all white, the trees, grass, the