Martin watches Henry as a lull falls. He wonders how it is, in all these years, they never learned to talk without their mother. Now there is only all the space and quiet where she should be and is not.

“Should we play cards?” asks Martin, because he can’t take the silence. Tess will hate this, but he doesn’t want to go to sleep yet.

“Should I go get the girls?” asks Josh.

Martin winces, knowing Tess won’t come if Josh asks her, certain Tess will somehow hear that Josh called her a “girl.”

“I’ll go up,” he says, taking his beer.

“I’ll get Alice,” Henry says.

“It’s late,” says Tess, just as Martin knew she would. She’s on her phone checking work email, and he knows she’ll be up for hours still.

“It’s nine o’clock.”

“I want to get up to run.”

“There’s too much ice out on the roads.”

She reaches next to the bed and holds up a mess of netted metal. “Henry gave me these to put on my shoes.”

“You’re not going to sleep; you’re working,” he says.

“No one else at work is on vacation yet.”

Martin looks past her, toward the sleeping children.

“Can you ask Henry for the Wi-Fi password?”

“You can ask him when you come downstairs.”

She stands up, still holding her computer. “We should talk about the house.”

He takes it from her. “We can maybe talk about the house, but your computer stays here.”

Tess sits, phone in hand and far enough away, she hopes, to look at email. Kate and Josh are on the couch and close to one another. Martin and Alice and Henry are all cross-legged on the floor with beers.

Tess hates games, but Helen always used to make them play. We’re grown-ups, Tess often said to Martin before or later, why must we play games? But it filled up the time. It was better, certainly, than trying to talk about real things. Six weeks ago, Tess terminated a surprise pregnancy and told no one—a faulty IUD, which, said her gynecologist, was less rare than one might think. Helen had died six months before, but it still felt so close. Tess took a test alone at work. She’d come home the night after the procedure; she’d told her bosses one of the kids was sick because she’d never called in sick herself. She’d gone to bed early, claiming nausea, and felt only a small pang of guilt when Martin had gone out special after feeding the kids dinner to the fancy grocer near their old apartment, to get her her favorite organic ginger ale.

Tess is forty-two and tired. Her kids are kids now, and she is grateful for it. They are potty trained and go to school; they don’t need her every second. She remembers thinking maybe she would call Helen if she could call Helen, but if she had been able to call Helen, she might have had the baby. If she knew that Helen would come to stay and sit up with Tess each night while she nursed, watch Masterpiece Theatre with her, bring her large, cold glasses of water, cook all her favorite meals. Tess doesn’t want to be a new mother again without Helen there to help.