I roll out of bed, a feat that is no longer easy with my third trimester belly, and worse still with the body pillow snuggled against my back. The battering rain and wind has let up sometime during the night, leaving a wake of toppled garbage and recycling bins. Our garbage bin is miraculously unscathed, anchored in a strip of ice along the curb. The recycling bin, on the other hand, has at last succumbed.

A thin cushion of snow has settled on the bins, a shroud on the fallen soldiers. The flakes fall in a vacuum of silence, a sharp contrast to the howl and thump of the horizontal storm that kept us staring at the walls last night as if they might shred away from us.

I peek in on Cadence. Her new princess tent sits in the center of the room, her other things shoved against the walls to make room for it. She stares at me from her bed, blinking eyes swollen from recent sleep.

“Kewi, awake, huh,” she says, referring to the sound of a running shower.

“Yeah,” I answer and pull her into my arms.

Her porcelain dolls are absent from her bed. I am amazed my sister-in-law was somehow able to pry the delicate toys away from her. Their sparkling paint and fancy outfits are suffering from Cadence’s unwavering devotion.

She wiggles from my grasp to unzip her tent, and proceeds to pile various toys and books into my lap. Before she buries me, I scoop her up and show her the quiet white morning outside our windows. The effect is instant; she marvels in silence at how the world has changed overnight, touching the glass with her fingertips.

She pries her eyes away. “Da want milk?”

The spell is broken, and so begins a morning like any other.