If she’d meant to go out for a smoke, even just for a moment, she would have put on her boots. Wouldn’t she? Or something. Sneakers. Slippers, even.

Even if she were planning to step just outside the door. In the moment of crisis, with Anna’s legs curled up in her long nightgown, it’s not something anyone noticed. But now Maeve stares. She tries out a few rushed excuses: Anna was drunk and forgot, then didn’t want to climb all the stairs back to retrieve her boots. Or, as Dan suggested, Anna was sleepwalking.

What comes back to her again is the sound she heard last night just as she turned out the light. Something she wishes she could forget. Half asleep with half a mug of whiskey in her, and then the heavy sleep that followed. A kind of bang, or a knock.

Anna’s door?

She recalls her own silly knock in response. How after that, there was no sound at all. She’d assumed Anna was already asleep. Anna only sleeping there in the first place to make Maeve more comfortable. She glances over to where Sim is waiting for her in the kitchen.

Just an accident.

No one would step out into the snow in bare feet. No one. Not in this weather. Not on purpose.

She shuts the freezer door behind her.

Karo is waiting for them in the lobby. She’s holding a long cardboard tube, and she draws out the roll of heavy paper housed inside. It’s the thing she was searching for—a proper survey, she says.

“I wanted something better than a map.” She hands the roll to Sadie and watches as the younger woman lays it out on the desk, then leans over it to smooth the page flat. “We can’t wait here any longer. Someone needs to go down the mountain for help.”

“Someone?” Maeve says. She can’t stop her mind cycling on Anna’s bare feet and tries to calm herself down. Sadie seems to have lost her earlier agitation and stands, stone-faced, on the other side of the desk. Her lip twitches as though she wants to bite it. Perhaps Karo has spoken to her; she seems corralled, brought in line.

Justin gets up to take a closer look, leaning on the back of a chair. Dan already has his boots on.

“We’re running out of time,” Karo says. “It doesn’t feel prudent to stay here anymore without at least trying.”

Maeve can’t help but notice that Karo’s hand is still shaking slightly; there’s a note of panic to her voice. Sim sets the foil trays down to one side.

“Why can’t we all go?”

Dan shoots him a look. “All of us trying to get down over the lower ridge would just be foolish.” He shakes his head, as if the decision has already been made. “Too risky.”

“Wait—” Maeve’s breath catches. In her mind, she is already halfway down the slope, heels digging into the ice, elbows drawn in tight for balance, away-away-away and home. Desperate to leave this place. “Slow down. No one wants to be left behind.”