Corey wasn’t wearing a pajama top. He was naked, or at least as much of him as she could see, and she was tugging and tugging at the neck of the sleeping bag till she felt the zipper give and somebody was crying out “Who is it? What’s happening?” and her son pushed himself up to a sitting position and he was fighting her too and then the sleeping bag slipped away and she saw Nancy there naked to her little gypsy waist. Corey shoved violently away from her, scrambling to his feet now—and he wasn’t wearing shorts or pajama bottoms either—and she was slapping him, or trying to, and saying, sobbing, “What are you thinking? What are you doing? Don’t you realize, don’t you understand—?”

They were all watching, all the kids. Somebody had flicked on the overhead light so that the room flared up in her face as if it had burst into flame and she remembered thinking They can all see her, see Nancy, and Nancy doesn’t even care, and then Corey, his face twisted, was shouting, “I hate you! Get out, get out, get out!”

Then she was back out in the snow again, furious, absolutely furious—they’d actually shoved her out the door and locked it behind her!—determined to put an end to this once and for all. She was going to go get Fitz—and Nancy’s father too. And Susannah. And Tim—and everybody else. Enough was enough. She kicked through the drifts, one hand held up in front of her face to shield it from the wind-borne snow, which seemed to have changed direction, or—wait a minute, where was she? Was this right? Wasn’t that the house over there?