She pulls her pack from her back pocket. “I’ll deny it if you’re caught.”

He laughs. “Quiet out here,” he says, handing back her pack and using the end of her cigarette to light his.

“It’s creepy,” she says. “I wake up sometimes in a cold sweat.” Even all those years wandering out there by herself, nature has never felt natural or calming to Alice. What feels natural is walking to the bodega at ten at night to get ice cream or beer, the subway, art, museums, friends and food, miles of sidewalks. All this quiet is so much more ominous than any crowd.

He takes a long drag, and she watches. “Been a while?” she says.

“Too long.” They watch Josh pat a block of snow and then another. “Bears?” he says. “Keeping you up?”

“More how ineffectual and destructive humans are,” she says. She feels Martin turn to look at her but does not look back at him. “Ignore me,” she says and takes a drag. She looks past Josh to the barn. All the lights are off. Henry is still inside, just as she asked.

“How long you think before Kate tells us she wants the house for herself?”

Alice pulls hard on her cigarette, eyes still on the barn. When she speaks, it sounds apologetic, but to whom, for what, she isn’t sure: “Henry has some plan to give it to the birds.”

“I love my brother, but you know he’s never really had a grown-up thought.”

Somewhere inside, right now, Henry’s helping with the children. “He’s well-intentioned, you know,” she says.

“Isn’t there a saying about the uselessness of that?”

Alice doesn’t take the bait. “You think Tess would go for giving it to Kate?”

Martin’s shoulders slump. “I think Tess is very committed to concepts of fair.”

“I just don’t want to fight about it.” Alice grew up in a mostly silent household. She didn’t love it, but also, confrontation of most any kind has always made her want to run away.

“I don’t imagine,” Martin says, watching Josh lean over, pack the snow with both hands, huff, “you or I will be the ones who fight.”

Alice clutches her phone in her pocket with her free hand, hoping for a text from Maddie, a moment of uncomplicated interaction, but the phone’s inert, unmoved.

“You like the new job?” says Martin, changing the subject. He takes another, slower drag.