“It’s a good lesson,” Karen said. “We’ll learn to store food better.”

“We’ll learn to get more wild foods,” Helen said. “We can get acorns.”

“We’ll get a couple of deer and have venison all winter,” Karen said.

“What about Perley?” I said. “Soon he’ll be eating more food. I want him to be healthy.”

“It’s not healthy to be feasting all the time,” Karen said. “This is better. This is better for Perley. He’ll be hardy. He’ll be ready for anything, right from the beginning of his life. And he’s got you. You’ll nurse him as long as he’ll let you. Right, Lily?” But I could see how happy she was, so I could see that she didn’t need me to answer.

They could agree on Survival Dice, but when it came to the house, the truce between Karen and Helen was bound to fall apart. After all, the truce was based on starvation, a condition whose first symptom is irritability and whose second symptom is poor decision-making. The house continued to go up but it didn’t get any better. The first September rain, the roof leaked and water blew in through the walls. We had to wait for a dry day to do anything about it. Grim, Helen bought caulk, grout, and spray foam insulation. Pale, she climbed a ladder and patched the roof. Tight-lipped, Karen sprayed foam into the gaps in the walls. I rested beneath the dogwood with Perley. He was almost crawling by then, tipping himself forward onto all fours so that he could reach out and share the last tin of kippers with me. Karen and Helen stopped for lunch, and Helen divided a songbird in half.

“I divide, you decide,” Karen said.

“But I divided,” Helen said.

“Right, so I get to decide,” Karen said. They ate their swift in tense silence.

“We need to move the woodstove in soon,” Karen said. It had been sitting beneath a tarp at the top of the driveway all summer. It weighed four hundred pounds.

“We should borrow a dolly,” Helen said.

“A dolly won’t work,” Karen said. “It’s too heavy and the ground is too uneven.”

“A dolly will work fine. We can borrow one from Frank,” Helen said.

“I’m telling you a dolly won’t work,” Karen said. “And I’m sick of borrowing things from Frank.”

“Then you figure it out. Is this my job? To come up with ideas so you can shoot them down?” asked Helen.

“Do you want some kind of award for coming up with bad ideas that won’t work?” asked Karen.

“Anytime something goes wrong with the house it’s my fault, and anytime anything goes right it’s because you’re a genius,” Helen said.

“You’re hungry. Finish your sparrow,” Karen said.