So they write, they email, they talk on the phone. Sometimes they Skype after school in the very classrooms that have exhausted them, or else at home, after supper. Marianne sits at her kitchen table and Janine sits in a closet she’s rigged up for writing, much better, she says, than the big glass room her husband built. They talk about poetry—Janine has become a big reader of the Beats, but also the Black Arts writers and the Imagists. Marianne has been reading old favorites: Plath and Sexton and Dickinson, Rilke and Neruda and Szymborska and Levertov and Rich and Olds. They have arguments about writing. Janine doesn’t understand how Marianne can write if she doesn’t believe in God, and Marianne doesn’t understand why she would write if she does. What’s the point, they both wonder? Neither one can explain it to the other.

But in person, that’s different, Marianne thinks, when her train finally screeches to its stop. It’s possible Janine has saved some recriminations for this meeting—why wouldn’t she? Or else they’ll be awkwardly silent around the things that have gone unsaid: how Marianne could have started an entire school under false pretenses, why she allowed Janine and her work to be used by GWGW, why she went to the press and not to her students.

She gets up anyway, climbs the stairs, and walks through stinging sideways-blown snow to the coffee shop crowded with tourists clutching shopping bags. Christmas music playing. A quick scan around the over-warm room—maybe Janine isn’t here, she thinks—but then she recognizes her friend, seated with two mugs at a small table near the window.

“You made it!” Janine cries, standing. She embraces Marianne, even though her heavy coat is wet with snow. “The line was so long, I got you some too. I hope it’s still warm.”

“How was Beth’s interview?”

“Fingers crossed, but I think it went well. That’s an amazing thing to come out of the storm—the Weather Channel footage has brought in so many opportunities.”

“That’s great, Janine. She deserves it.” Marianne sips the intensely sweet, thick cocoa.

“Do you think she’d be okay? If she lived here? She’s never lived away from home. And New York City …”

“She’ll love it,” Marianne says. “She’s tough and smart. She’ll do great, and the storm—” Marianne doesn’t know why she’s bringing up Sandy, when it has taken such enormous effort not to read a message into this second, destructive storm. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t on Janine’s mind. “We don’t usually have weather like that. If we do, I’ll help—she can call me anytime. Or maybe I’ll call her?” She says this last part as lightly as she can.