“I haven’t been to one of these in years. I would have invited y’all to my place but then I thought this would be more fun, like camping.” Lilian lighted one of her travel lamps and set it next to the candle, where it glowed with a medicinal white light that canceled the flickering candles. “And look! I found these notebooks at a back-to-school sale when I was out shopping. I got one for each of us.” She reached into one of her grocery bags and handed around speckled composition books, the pages tightly stitched into the spine.

“Thank you,” they said, holding the notebooks like schoolchildren and eyeing the bags of groceries, packed tightly with sea-salted taro chips, cans of smoked almonds, and imported chocolates. Lilian positioned a second lamp on the nightstand between the room’s two beds but did not offer any food.

“Some roads were already closed by the time I was driving over. This could be a big one,” she told them, shucking off her shoes and getting into Janine’s bed. Janine still sat at the foot, holding her notebook. Lilian stacked all the pillows behind her and propped her notebook against her knees. In the antiseptic light, her powdered face looked pale and ghostlike, her penciled eyebrows vaguely menacing. “I hope my husband does come back to the condo. I hope he makes a wrong turn and gets washed out to sea. Do you know since class was canceled I’ve written five poems?”

“Congratulations,” Janine said. She hadn’t written a word since Thursday morning. “That’s really a lot of poems.”

“These newest ones are through the eyes of his Russian bride-to-be—did I tell you he’s decided, apparently, on the Russian? That man never changes his password on anything. The poems detail the realizations she has about his faults.”

“Hey, Lilian, mind if I pass around some snacks?” Donald didn’t wait for her answer but moved for the bags.

“Oh, sure,” she said. “There’s wine, too.”

Janine opened the wine, which had a twist cap, and poured it generously into the small paper cups she found tucked among the snacks. She passed a cup to Donald, then Lilian, and left two out for Eric and Tom, who should have been back by now, she thought.

“I’m taking these chips down to Marianne,” said Donald, pulling on Lilian’s raincoat. “I feel bad for her, all alone. She’s next door, right?”

“Two doors down,” Janine said. “But come right back, so we don’t worry.”

“That was such a great reading you gave,” Lilian said, after he’d left. “Both you and Donald were great. I was impressed.”

“Thanks,” Janine said. She wasn’t sure if Lilian understood the context of her poem, but it didn’t matter. “Now I wish I hadn’t given it, of course.”

“Why?”