Monica Vigil-Rios wakes at dawn to find her daughter Cordelia shivering with cold and realizes that the heat has gone out again in their trailer. Monica silently curses her husband Eliot, a geologist, for leaving her alone with Cordelia and their baby, Beatrice, while he collects rock samples. Eliot will be home later, but she will have to attempt to fix the heater on her own now. She tries to restore heat to the trailer but is unsuccessful, so she goes back to bed. She wakes too late to get Cordelia onto her bus to school and is forced to venture out into the cold, windy morning on foot with both girls in tow. Of the motley crew of residents at their trailer park outside of the town of Gypsum, she is unsure whom she might be able to ask for a ride. After a brief walk around the park, she returns dispirited to the trailer. Cordelia, who adores school, is upset that she is missing art day. Monica wishes that her life were different. She had envisioned something other than a dusty trailer park in the Mojave desert when she’d married an academic, and she hopes to live in a small house, finish her own degree, and attend fancy dinner parties.