She follows him through the open gate just as the weather changes—the wind drops, and the first real snowflakes catch in her eyelashes, errant and heavy.

It’s four hundred yards up the winding drive, walking blindly in the dark, and then the building is there, looming high overhead. Maeve steps back, surprised by how it seems to have materialized out of the storm. She tilts her chin to look. Six stories. The only light shining through a window is on the ground level, as though a single lamp has been left to guide her. She can see her own reflection, drawing closer, in the glass.

The driver tosses her duffel down at the front entrance. Then he’s gone, heading to the road without another word.

She turns back one last time. The deer are still there, motionless. The big doe’s eyes on her from the shadows on the wooded side of the fence, and snow suddenly everywhere. Snow coming down all around her.

The door swings open.

“Mommy, I see you!”

Maeve leans into the laptop screen, and back home, her daughter does the same, Talia’s long chestnut hair swinging as she shoves her little brother out of view.

Off camera, four-year-old Rudy lets out a howl. “But I want to see Mommy!”

“It’s okay—” Maeve starts, but the screen freezes and the image suddenly dissolves, pixelating, as though the little girl in the picture were falling to pieces. There’s silence as even the sound cuts. Maeve waits, calling out every few seconds—“Talia? Talia?”—just as if she were sitting at the child’s bedside, gently waking her, rather than half-perched on her bed in the bowl of a mountain range two thousand miles away, trying to catch her breath in the thin air.

Jet lag has her upside down. Early November, and the sun not even fully up yet, the first band of light striking a fine note at the ridge of pine that seems to crest like a giant wave, rising up out of the rock face to the east of her. The morning air sharp and clean; the ground, far below, frost-veined.

The connection stays broken and Maeve swirls her finger against the track pad, impatient, then sets the laptop on her desk and pulls on her tights.

There’d been someone waiting up for her when she arrived; the door swung open and a hand pulled at Maeve’s, ushering her inside. The sudden contact made Maeve flinch. But it was only a clerk of some kind, an almost severe-looking Asian girl, noticeably young, her blunt black hair cut with razor sharpness. She tugged at Maeve’s arm, hand over hand, drawing her closer.

“I was so worried. Are you okay? I’ve heard—” The girl glanced out at the retreating driver before closing and locking the door. She spun her back against it and looked at Maeve, expectant. “I’ve heard so much about you.”