He may not be a big smiler, but he doesn't need to be: she knows that face and that look in his eyes and she knows she's got him. She stands taller with a little toss of her damp hair, letting the smallest of wins seize upon her mood.

"Well, you just hit today's jackpot, Texas."

Behind door number three is a stack of four MREs, packaged in their unprinted tins. They get traded in to be refilled every time rations go out, and every year they get a little more scratched and dinged up. There four are what's left before they have to wait it out in the rations line again, a process that will absorb someone's whole afternoon, and they'll do it again and again until the whole fucking thing collapses.

Tess pulls two out and brings them over to the table, where she stands over Joel with a look of anticipation on her face. She is no longer Vanna White, elegant in her stretched-out t-shirt and threadbare lounge pants. Now she is Suzy Homemaker, barefoot and ready to have a luxurious dinner on the table. No one else gets to be in on this joke, just him.

"I slaved over a hot stove for this, you know," she confides to him, as she opens the first. Turkey. Again. Thank you, remnants of Massachusetts's former turkey industry.