“I can’t . . .” says Alice. “I can’t imagine where she’d go.” Alice thinks briefly, abashed, that if Maddie ran away she’d run to Alice. She knows better than to say this. But her eyes wander toward the backyard, thinking maybe, any minute, she’ll see Maddie bounding toward the door.

Kate looks outside. “It’s warmer,” she says, “than it could be.”

“She’s been gone almost six hours,” says Alice. “I should call the police. Quinn should have called the police.”

Josh is downstairs now too and looks at his wife, then Alice. “One of us should call the police right now.”

“But if I call the cops,” says Alice, “she’ll lose custody.”

What no one talks about but everybody knows—in the ways that families know things, in this case because of Helen (who would have never known if not for Henry, who called and told her), who called and told the rest of them, who took Alice aside more than once and tried to reassure her it was not her fault—everyone knows that a year ago Alice reported a mother for leaving her kid alone while she was at work. Alice was supposed to do this—report people who left their children, even if they were going to work—and the mother lost the kid. The system, Alice did and still does mutter to herself when she thinks about it: it is not meant for sustenance or maintenance, not meant to keep children with their parents; it is punitive and unfair. She thinks about this each time the job proves again how limited her ability to help is. These are the few times she thinks she might want to burrow back into art and not be so exposed every day. Three days after the state took her son from her, the mother killed herself.

“We need to help her,” Kate says, whisking the eggs.

“Yes,” Tess says, annoyed she wasn’t the one to say this. “We should help her look.”

“I’ll take you,” Henry says to Alice. He’s come in from outside in just his jeans and T-shirt. Martin must have gone and told him.

“I’ll come,” Josh says. “I have a headlamp in my car.”

“It isn’t dark,” Tess snaps.

Kate looks at her. “Tess and I will stay back with the kids.”

Josh and Martin go upstairs to get socks and sweaters. It’s so gendered, all of a sudden, the Men going out to find, maybe to save, this little girl. Tess cuts thick slices of bread, eyes angled toward the children; Kate rolls the eggs slowly in the pan.

Alice is grateful no one stops to think more. If she just keeps all of them moving, acting, doing, maybe no one will bring up calling the cops again.

“It’s going to hail soon,” Josh says.

“We’ll pack coats,” says Henry. “I have a stack of umbrellas in the car.”