Inside, Maeve scans the surfaces first, but the desk is spare and clean, the cabinets closed. She rolls a few drawers open and shut slowly, unsure what her excuse would be if Karo were to walk in. I was just looking for an Advil, Maeve practices in her mind. I thought you might have some over-the-counter stuff in here. The cabinets are stacked with hanging files; in the desk drawers, only office supplies.

Maeve looks to the window. Karo’s day pack sits propped against an old painter’s stool. She takes one last quick glance over her shoulder and opens up the pack.

There you are, she thinks.

She tucks Justin’s camera bag under the wealth of duvet and opens the door.

Maeve passes through the lobby and goes up the stairs, duvet dragging, to her own room. The space is vacant and haunted now, bare sheets drawn up over the mattress, frost inside the windowpane. In the mirror, her reflection startles her. White-faced in white bedding, her own ghost. She needs to pee; in the bathroom, the water in the bowl with the first glassy sheen of ice forming along its surface. The porcelain burns cold against her thighs.

Safe in her privacy, she reaches into her pocket, pulls out the photo strip, and sobs, her thumb tracing the line of Talia’s brow, as though she could tuck her long hair behind one ear or stroke Rudy’s puffed-out cheeks. Maeve’s own cheeks in the photo, a little gaunt but lifted in real glee. She wants to cry it out here, far away from Karo. Alone with it.

All the things this time was supposed to be. A rest, a reset, a way for Maeve to regain her spirit and come back a better artist—better, in fact, at everything. More able to care for her children. More able to care for herself. And every last moment of it turned to disaster. A punishment for wanting more than the world wants to offer women.

The snow and the cold and Anna frozen in it. Punishment seems the only possible word.

She gives herself five minutes—five minutes to wallow, she thinks—then wipes her nose with her sleeve and leaves again.

The common room at the end of the hall has the widest view of the grounds and a door with a manual lock. She stands at the window. She’s so much higher here, the vantage so much better. She goes to crank the window open, thinking that it will shove the high-piled snow off the sill, but it’s frozen shut. She has to push up onto her toes to see out. The open field to one side, and the new snow, always new snow, moving in.

Nothing else. No person, no vehicle, no rescue on the horizon.