Vermont

Vermont is the destination of Anna Fox, Ed, and Olivia’s December ski trip, but it becomes more than a place on their itinerary: the journey gives a family holiday the outward shape of togetherness while carrying the separation Ed has already set in motion. The state’s snow, roads, and inn accompany a shift from attempted normality to an encounter Anna cannot forget; much later, her snow boots still bear the memory of that night.

The Journey from Manhattan

Ten days before the trip, Ed had decided that he and Anna should separate, and Anna had agreed in principle. She admits that she did not believe the decision would become real, even when Ed summoned a broker. The trip therefore begins in an unsettled interval: the separation has been named, but Anna has not yet accepted what it means. In her later account, Vermont becomes the place where that interval gives way to a more painful recognition.

The family packs Olivia into the Audi and leaves Manhattan along 9A, crossing the Henry Hudson Bridge. Two hours later, they are winding through upstate New York on roads Ed calls the back roads. He promises Olivia diners and pancake places, but the route offers little of either. At a lone IHOP in easternmost New York, Olivia drenches her waffles in maple syrup while Anna and Ed exchange glances across the table. The small, ordinary meal holds the strain in view without explaining it to their daughter.

Snow begins outside the restaurant, and Olivia points at it with her fork. Anna joins her in a playful exchange, telling her there will be more snow at Blue River, the ski resort in central Vermont. The detail matters to the trip’s family-facing purpose: Olivia has a destination to anticipate, and Anna and Ed keep their attention on that promise rather than disclose the separation. Anna notes that the child whose visit inspired the destination is a classmate, not a friend, a correction that quietly punctures the family’s effort to make the holiday feel like a shared adventure.

A Holiday Held Together for Olivia

The drive onward is mostly quiet. Anna has argued that they should not spoil Olivia’s vacation by telling her about the separation, and Ed has agreed; they will press on for their daughter. Their silence is thus a decision as well as an absence of conversation. It protects Olivia from news the adults have not yet worked through, while leaving Anna and Ed alone with the knowledge between them.

The road carries them past broad fields, streams filmed with ice, and villages before a weak snowstorm gathers near the Vermont border. When Olivia bursts into song, Anna joins in, trying unsuccessfully to harmonize. The brief singing does not resolve the tension, but it shows the parents continuing to participate in the holiday they have promised her. Their attention repeatedly turns toward Olivia’s experience, even as the trip moves them toward a confrontation with the state of their marriage.

They plan to stay outside Two Pines, about half an hour from the resort, at the Fisher Arms. The inn advertises itself as a historic Vermont establishment through images of blazing hearths and snow-frilled windows. On arrival, the small parking lot, icicles hanging above the entrance, steep ceiling, shabby-genteel furniture, and photo-ready fireplace make the place resemble the winter retreat its publicity promises. Anna notices the contrast between that polished welcome and the exposed uncertainty of the family staying there: the surroundings offer the appearance of warmth, but cannot restore the security the trip is meant to preserve.

The Inn and the Separation

The Vermont stay is also where Ed’s decision stops being an abstraction. In a quiet exchange, he sighs, rubs a spot on a bucket, and tells Anna that he cannot take the situation any longer. His eyes and brow appear weighed down as he speaks. Anna looks instead at the ice cubes already softening on the ground. Neither speaks or moves. The scene’s stillness gives the separation a physical setting: the trip has brought them away from Manhattan, but the distance has not made their impasse easier to address.

That moment casts the earlier arrangements in a different light. The journey had started with Anna agreeing only in principle, while privately expecting that the separation would not happen. The broker’s arrival had failed to convince her; the conversation in Vermont, by contrast, leaves her with Ed’s plainly stated limit and no immediate reply. The inn’s advertised comfort and the quiet between them stand together as opposing versions of the trip: a winter holiday on the surface, and a marriage reaching its breaking point beneath it.

The Place in Anna’s Later Memory

Vermont returns in Anna’s later account through a concrete object rather than a description of the landscape. She finds her snow boots in the utility closet and recognizes that she has not worn them since that night in Vermont. Their long disuse makes the trip an enduring boundary in her personal chronology: the boots belong to a time and place she has not revisited, even as their presence brings that memory into the house.

At this later point, Anna recognizes that she has been waiting for her family to return, although they will not, and that her depression will not lift without her help. The recollection of Vermont sits beside that recognition, linking the family holiday to the loss that followed without claiming that the trip itself explains everything that came afterward. The boots mark both what she has avoided and what she can now face. When she asks herself what she is waiting for, the answer has changed: she is no longer waiting for the family’s return or for recovery to arrive on its own.