Sim is the only one missing. No one has mentioned him, but his absence is something Maeve noted in the moment before she unzipped her pants. Her tights are warm against her legs now. The hamstring still throbs in the background, but it’s muted. Anna has fortified the tea with a single shot of whiskey.

She’s already heard the bad news: The automatic generator failed to kick in. This may have something to do with negligence on the part of the company man who inspects it every year, Karo says, or it may just be bad luck. What is certainly bad luck is that the manual generator—the fail-safe—is stored in an equipment shed near the western border, and this shed was buried in the second avalanche. She and Dan hauled themselves out there on an ancient snowmobile to try and retrieve it but found the shed lost to snow and debris. The snowmobile’s engine quit halfway back, the track too short for deep powder, and they were left to walk the rest of the way home.

But the radio. The radio is good news.

While Maeve gets warm, Sadie is behind the front desk, working to get the thing set up. It’s on a crank charge, like a camp radio, and she pumps the handle around and around—but it sticks and her hands slip when she tries to go faster. She pushes away, frustrated.

“It’s just a matter of finding a clear channel,” Karo says, standing over her. She looks up, and Maeve can see her baseline confidence is still there, although by now her eyes are tired. She wants to get through to someone in town—anyone, really, she says. Someone who can give them a timeline on the power restoration.

Anna pushes two chairs together and stretches out, singing to herself anxiously, near where Maeve sprawls on the floor. Justin paces, turning his phone on, then off again, then on. The light comes and goes on his screen.

“Anything?” Maeve says. She’s done the same thing herself a dozen times in the past twenty minutes. She’s itching to do it now, her phone held loosely in her hand.

“Works great.” He drops to a crouch next to her, angling the phone and ducking his lips, then snaps a photo of them both. “I mean, there’s no signal, obviously. Why, was there a reason you wanted to call someone?” Maeve rolls her eyes. She hopes he can keep this up, his good humor—hers is already mostly gone.

Dan walks into the room. He’s been securing all the exterior doors and windows—Why? Maeve wonders. Against what?—and checking one more time for damage to the building’s structure, but now he slides in beside Karo to look over Sadie’s shoulder at the radio.