Outside, the light thins and fades. Karolina comes out of her office and Maeve stokes the fire, adding a few logs and hauling wood closer in from the pile near the back door.

The sun goes down.

“Do you know,” Karo says, lighting an oil lamp, “I’ve lived here for five years, in this place. But I’ve never been here alone.”

She gives her wrist a painful snap, and the match snuffs out. The new flame flickers in its glass cage.

“Just tell yourself it’s the last night of this,” Maeve says. “A matter of hours.”

But Karo’s hand still hovers over the flame, the tremor in it unmistakable. The foil trays that Sim and Maeve retrieved in the morning are still stacked on the main desk and she unwraps a corner of each, one by one, to figure out what’s in there, but it all seems too fussy. In the end Maeve digs an unopened package of hot dogs out of the back of the refrigerator. The kitchen itself must be cold enough now to keep things fresh. She skewers a few hot dogs with the longer, unbroken sticks of kindling to hold over the fire.

It’s quiet and almost cozy with just the two of them. They go to pull the couch up closer to the fire, but Karo falters and then backs away. Maeve waits for her to take up her side again, but when the other woman doesn’t—only standing there, gripping her hands together as if in prayer—she adjusts it herself. They curl up, each at one end, holding their hot dogs over the flames.

For a long moment, neither of them says anything.

The silence feels soft and heavy. There’s only the indiscriminate crackle of burning wood to break it up, here and there, in bursts. Maeve looks over and finds Karo focused on the front windows, staring out into the night. Neither wistful nor anxious, just a steady gaze. There’s nothing out there that Maeve can see: the dark also soft, also heavy.

“I worried,” Maeve says. “I wondered if they’d turn around and come back again before nightfall. But I guess not.”

A drop of moisture, fat or just liquid, comes off the end of her skewer and hits the flame with a sizzle. She lifts it away from the fire.

“No, that wouldn’t carry. Not for Dan,” Karo says. She blinks, and the strain in her face is hard to ignore. “He’ll be in it now. Until this thing is finished.”

Karo’s skewer flames up at one end and she gives it a shake, pulls it out to cool. But when she holds it up, the skewer keeps on shaking—the tremor, Maeve can see now, moving from Karo’s elbow to her fingertips. She leans closer in case the other woman needs help.

“Are you all right?”

When Karo answers, it’s matter-of-fact. All business.