Nobody would have asked for the ice storm that takes down trees and knocks the power out, leaving nothing but two buckets of snow melting on the wood stove and candlelight so weak, the old man sitting at the kitchen table can hardly see to play cards. Yet how else but by the old woman’s laughter when he mistakes a jack for a queen would he look at her face in the half-light as if for the first time while the kitchen around them and the very cards he holds in his hands disappear?