I snarl at the snow, at the warm, glowing windows and Deborah’s silhouette peeking out. Her maternal pleasure radiates.

Nicky is here to take care of everything! He loves to help us and feel useful.

Not today, dickheads! Today you’re getting a substitute who’s incompetent at best when it comes to manual labor, and you can just deal.

Their driveway is personally cruel to me right away, a crust of ice eating one of my shovels. I dig back in, nose dripping like a faucet, face a frozen block of “Why, god, why” while the rest of my body melts like a candle in these coveralls. This is the pits. This is some goddamn bullshit. I call my present situation every curse word I can come up with. Sometimes Nicholas is over here well before he has to go to work, and I mentally run through that timeline. In order to shower and get to Rise and Smile at seven, that means he’s doing this in the dark. I’m so pissed on his behalf that I shovel faster.

It’s frankly amazing that he has any goodwill left in his heart toward his parents. I want to drag them outside and bury them with my shovel.

There’s so much snow to clear, I’m too daunted to be methodical about it and scoop at random, flinging it over my shoulder. Deborah and Harold aren’t getting neat borders of snow on either side of the drive. They’re getting carnage. It occurs to me that if I come back again next time it snows and do another piss-poor job, Nicholas will be off the hook. Mr. and Mrs. Rose will beg me to stop. They’ll hire a snowplow guy.

When I’m about halfway finished, the front door opens and Deborah trundles out in a fur coat that’s probably fashioned solely from baby animals, steaming mug in hand. She hustles over, a big smile on her face, until she gets up close and realizes that the person in coveralls and a hideous hat is me.

“Oh!”

Her horror is invigorating. I want to have it made into perfume. Clothing. Bath bombs.

“Naomi,” she says gravely, like she’s just heard the most terrible news. “I wasn’t expecting …”

“Is that for me?” I reach for the mug. It’s hot chocolate. Before Deborah can reply, I take it from her and sip. There are mini marshmallows swimming at the top, and I’d stake my soul she put in thirty-two of them, one for each year of Nicholas’s life. This hot chocolate tastes better than the kind she supplies me with during winter visits, confirming my paranoid suspicions that Nicholas gets the good stuff while I’m offered store-brand.

Her mouth is a round O as she watches me drink. “Thanks,” I say when I’m finished, handing the mug back.

“Is Nicholas feeling well?”

I’m not subjecting him to a pop-in visit from Mommie Dearest and chicken soup cooked by “the woman.” “He’s terrific,” I tell her cheerfully. “Well, I better get back to it. Gotta lotta work to do!”

The rest of the driveway practically shovels itself as I zone out, thinking about Nicholas. Next time he comes over here to shovel, I should tag along to help out. We’ll get it done in half the time.

Whatever muscles aren’t numb are aching when I climb into the Jeep. I’ve been here for two hours. I’m positive it doesn’t take Nicholas longer than an hour to achieve the same, if not better, results. When I pull out of the driveway, I honk twice for good-bye because I imagine that’s what Nicholas probably does.

The journey back home is better than the journey out, since snowplows have cleared the roads. I can’t wait to get home and shower, but I think about Nicholas’s rough night. His coughing fit, and how he’ll wake up hungry and pitiful with no motivation to cook for himself.

Most food joints around here are closed on Sunday mornings, but Blue Tulip Café, the coffee shop Brandy’s sister owns, is thrilled when I pull up. None of the tables have patrons and there are no gaps between pastries in the display case, which means I’m the first customer of the day. This place is going to go the way of the Junk Yard and we all know it, so I buy extra. Breakfast sandwiches, soup, coffee. One of the workers helps me haul it all out to my car.

I make one more stop to restock on cold and flu medicine before heading home. For the first time since we moved, I visualize the house in the woods when I think the word home instead of the white rental on Cole Street.

When the Jeep shivers up the driveway, I can see Nicholas waiting for me behind the screen door. As I start to carry in the food and medicine, he runs out in his slippers.

“Get back inside!” I order.

“You need help.”

“You need to sit down. You’re sick.”

He takes the coffee and soup from me, anyway. I’m amused at the way he keeps gaping at me, completely boggled. Deborah must have called him already with a full report. Hills of snow all over the yard now, she just tossed it anywhere. And then she drank all your hot chocolate! The good kind! “You didn’t have to do that,” he tells me when we get inside. “Shovel my parents’ driveway. Why did you?”

“If nobody showed up to shovel their driveway, your mom might be forced to do it herself. Deborah’s Gucci pantsuits? In this snow?” I chuckle dryly. “What a catastrophe. So I said, ‘Not on my watch, snow.’”

His eyes are huge. If he thought I was a changeling before, I shudder to think what he imagines I am now. I pester him to go wait on the couch and bring him his breakfast, then test his forehead to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. It’s adorable how his hair is sticking out in every direction, and I run my fingers through it. He’s speechless and I’m basically Mrs. Cleaver. I think I could get used to this whole surprising-him-and-making-him-speechless thing. It’s delightful.

“Looks pretty out there,” he manages after a couple bites of his breakfast sandwich, with a nod at the window. His voice is a touch hoarse, probably exacerbated by Deborah making him talk on the phone. It’ll take a century to undo all the damage she’s done to him, but I’ll start with Vicks VapoRub and a humidifier. “All the snow. Like a holiday postcard.”

He would think that, all warm and cozy in his flannel and slippers. I have no positive opinions about snow at the moment. Screw snow. I wish global warming would hurry up and abolish the whole season. I grunt noncommittally and trudge past him, shedding my layers as I go.

“I’m going to take a shower and maybe a quick nap,” I say. “Will you be all right?”