“Listening.” Sim takes a step, and the door closes a little. He’s still got his back against it, and he raises his hand again as though he could stop Dan talking with it. He looks up to the sky. “There’s no one up there—we’d be able to hear them. Search-and-Rescue use choppers and the wind’s been too high for them to take off today. The weather’s too bad right now for them to save anyone from the weather. Know what I mean?” He nods at Dan. “You’ve already fired three of those things. Better save some for tomorrow.”

He steps back inside and the door closes behind him. Dan stares at him a moment longer, then turns and fires off two more flares into the dark.

By now, it’s long past the dinner hour. They heat leftover lasagna in foil packets over the fire and eat it with bread from the freezer. The deep freeze is a walk-in and will stay well below zero, even without power; there’s no risk of food spoilage for days, Karo says. Maeve is privately distraught every time someone uses that word, days. She wants to pour another shot of whiskey into her mug but doesn’t.

She pushes the pasta around in its foil bowl in an effort to interest herself in eating.

“Dancers,” Karo says. “Were you always so tiny?”

“Tiny and strong like bull,” Maeve says.

She takes a performative bite and chews, but the joke is lost on Karo.

“You’ll find it’s remarkable how life can change you,” she murmurs, and Maeve frowns; a flicker of something, sadness or regret, showing in Karo’s eyes. Then she’s already turned away, toward the windows and the dark. Listening the way Sim was at the door, the same intent look on her face. But there’s no new sound, no light of a vehicle on land or in the sky.

Anna says she’s tempted to sleep by the fire in her two chairs pushed together.

“It’ll be cold upstairs,” she says to Maeve. “Don’t you think?”

“How cold? Will the pipes freeze?”

Dan says no, the building should retain enough heat to keep things manageable—

“I know,” Maeve says, cutting him off. “For a few days.”

She hadn’t even realized he was listening to them.

Consensus is that the power will be back on in the morning. But Karo can’t find a channel on the radio, and there’s a decision that if for some reason the power is not back the next day (although this is unlikely, Dan says yet again), they’ll hike out to the eastern rim to see the road conditions.

“We can try the radio from there—out in the open,” Karo says.