I make a tiny little snowball and I throw it at him.

It hits him with a puff.

His eyes open wide, unbelieving.

Meow.

“Because you are acting like a little baby.” I point to Archie and Murdock. “Look how much fun they are having. Now go play.”

He cuts his eyes at me.

“Go play in the snow with your kid.”

He takes a deep breath, then he jumps into the snow and joins Archie and Murdock. The three of them dive, roll around, and wrestle.

A minute later, I join them.

Once we are wrestled out, we make our way down to the street and to the end of the cul-de-sac.

“Do you guys hear that?” I say, stopping.

It’s a cracking sound.

Murdock’s giant head swivels toward one of three houses rounding out the cul-de-sac.

I follow his gaze to the roof, where bits of snow are raining down.

There is a massive shelf of snow on the angled roof. The cracking sound is the weight of the snow and ice calving away. The entire shelf of snow is getting ready to fall.

It takes another minute of cracking, rumbling, tiny sections falling away.

Then it happens.

A thousand pounds of snow and ice breaks away, sliding off and crashing down.

It’s awesome.

Murdock barks, scared by the piercing noise.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s just snow.”

He calms down and we head back to Bonnie’s.

As I’m going to bed, Lassie tells me that he will accept fifty jingle balls and that after more research, snow isn’t that bad.

:06

“Up and at ‘em.”

Ingrid opened her eyes and looked up.

Tasha Reeves was standing over her, holding a steaming mug of coffee. Ingrid pushed herself to her feet and reached for the cup.

“Thanks,” she said,

Reeves pulled the cup back. “Girl, this isn’t for you.”

Ingrid grinned sheepishly and Reeves pointed to a coffee machine someone, probably staffer Jessica, had brought into the room.

Tasha continued going around the room, waking the others.

As Ingrid made her way over to the coffee machine, she could hear Welds groan as Tasha prodded him with her foot to wake up.

Ingrid pulled her cell phone — well, Henry’s cell phone — out of her pocket and checked the time.

4:58 a.m.

She noted the one missed call and guessed it was Henry calling from Bonnie’s landline. She listened to his voicemail with a smile, then let out a sigh. She wished she could call him back, but he’d been asleep for almost an hour.

Not for the first time, she thought about the one-hour constraint with her husband. But as always, the thought was fleeting. She wouldn’t trade twenty-four hours in a day with George Clooney for the one hour she got to spend with Henry.

The others slowly began to wake and made their way over to Ingrid.

Donald Port Authority rubbed his eyes and grumbled, “I slept in my contacts.”