Gina pressed the paper message against her thigh again, a motion that had already become a habit, the feeling of wanting to touch it detached in her mind from what it might mean. Chase would have an explanation for Kathleen Sheehan, for the call. He always did. He would say Gina had to start trusting him someday. But his embarrassed yawn made her angry; the old woman had caught him off-guard, and that was hard to do. Gina heard herself speak.

“Someone called this morning, I forgot to tell you,” she said. “A woman.”

Chase looked at her, and she could feel him grow alert. “What woman?”

She took the piece of paper from her pocket and read out what she knew by heart. Chase kept the guarded look on his face for a second longer and then laughed. There was relief in his laugh, but Gina didn’t know if he was relieved the woman was not who he’d thought, or relieved that once again he had a good answer.

“Katy Sheehan,” he said. “Sure. She took some pictures for me, up in the Bitterroot, for a water-rights case. I sent her a check for them.” He smiled as if he’d won.

Gina waited.

Alice said, “Why’s she asking about the check, then?”

“I don’t know,” Chase said, serious now. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever got those pictures.”

The old man came back and sat down heavily, ignoring the silence at the table. “Phone’s still out,” he said.

The windows were fogged and the room was close and warm. Gina believed Chase about the check, but believing him didn’t help. It just meant it was true she would have to start trusting him someday. “I’m going to walk around,” she said. Her legs were less shaky now, and she stood, leaving the hot chocolate on the table. Alice had guessed right: she missed coffee.

One of the children in snowsuits had fallen asleep under his parents’ table; the other played tic-tac-toe with her father in the gray borders of his newspaper. A teenaged girl slept against the wall beneath a print of a bugling elk, and her boyfriend slept with his head on the table, holding her hand. People without tables sat in mismatched chairs pulled from the motel cabins. The line for the phone was gone; everyone had accepted the downed lines and given up. The road back over the pass would open soon, and they could go home, and Gina would call then. She would not have seen her mother but she would have tried. And they would be safe at home, alive and whole.