Madeline carried Marley from where he’d been napping on the rocker. Two shanties sat near shore, one bright blue, the other Unpainted plywood. “Scary. Is it safe?”

Paul drew her close. “As long as you stay in the bay. You want to be careful. But yeah, those guys know what they’re doing. There’s probably eight, ten inches of ice. That’s plenty to hold you.”

Madeline started to feel excited about the idea. There were a few more people staying this year than last, but it was slow enough that she could go.

“Buddy, you want to go fishing with Us? Maybe we could steal you out of school for an afternoon,” Paul said when Greyson came out of his room.

Greyson shook his head. “Mrs. Callihan comes for arts and crafts today. And it’s pizza at lunch.”

“Oh well, then.” Paul gave him a skeptical look.

“Mrs. Callihan always brings treats. Last week she brang candy bars.”

“Brought,” Madeline said.

Greyson shrugged. “We’re making pot holders. I’ll make you one, Madeline. I’m making Mom one too.”

Madeline called Gladys and asked if she could come down and babysit the hotel in case someone wanted to check in or call with a reservation.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Just have to get my coat on.”

“You’re sure? I don’t want to be a bother.”

“No bother,” she snapped. “I ran that hotel before you were a glimmer in your mother’s eye, I guess I can handle it for a few hours, and Greyson too.”

“I only meant—”

“It’s nothing.”

“There’s no hurry, I can get Grey off to school.”

“That child is absolutely no trouble, we’ll be fine. Maybe Butte will come down, too, I’ll ask her. Either way, I’ll see you in a jiffy.” She slammed down the phone.

Paul was watching. “She can come, I take it?”

“Yep. Glad to. Annoyed I suggested it might be a bother.”

“You’ve given her a new lease on life.”

“She didn’t need one. She owns life.”

Paul lit the lantern in the shelter of the cab, and they trekked along the shore and out across the ice. He strode along, testing the ice with the spud, and Madeline followed. Looking out toward the open water she thought they could have floated in time, landed anywhere in the last thousand years. Abruptly, Paul stopped. “Here’s as good as anywhere, I guess.”

He spudded the first hole in the ice and let her try the second one. It was harder than he’d made it look, but after twenty minutes of pounding she broke through, and the icy water burbled Up. Paul scooped it clear with a sieve on a long handle, then tested the depth of the water with a weight on the line. He baited a hook with a minnow and squeezed a weight on the line with pliers and dropped it down the hole, then attached a bobber. “You do the other one.” Madeline did, balking a little at stabbing the minnow onto the hook.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait.”

The bobbers floated in the holes. Water froze on the lines, which made a tiny scritchling noise as they fluttered in the breeze. Madeline’s face got cold, and she turned her back to the wind. Now and then they warmed their hands around the glass globe of the hissing lantern.

“So, how’s married life treating you?” he asked at one point.

Madeline grinned. “Not bad. Survived the first year, almost.”

They’d gotten married in April at the courthouse in Crosscut. They had a reception at the hotel and invited everyone: Paul’s family, everyone they knew in McAllaster and Crosscut, all their friends from everywhere. Madeline started crying when Dwayne and Estelle and Candice walked in. Dwayne grinned and picked her Up for a hug and told her to stop bawling or they’d turn right back around for Chicago. Ted and Lisa Braith brought Walter, who sat tapping his foot to the music and smiling at everyone all afternoon.

Time had flown by since then. The summer and fall had disappeared in a haze of work, but the winter was theirs.

Paul trained his gaze on the bobbers again. Madeline squatted down and warmed her hands around the lantern.

“Randi’s coming Up for a parole review, eh?”

Madeline nodded, but she didn’t want to think about it. The trial had happened in June and Randi’d gotten a year in the county jail. Maybe she’d only serve part of that before they let her come home.

“She’ll want Grey back when she gets out.”

Madeline squinted off across the lake. The wind made snow dervishes rise in swirls Up off the ice. “I know.”

“She’s better with him lately.”

“Yeah. Better.” Randi wrote Greyson letters, made him things in the craft shop. She was allowed to go out in the yard with him—she was Using a walker now—to play games and visit in an open room, and she was more herself again, tickling and hugging him to make him giggle, calling him her little man.

“Maybe she’ll let him stay with Us some. Or even, I don’t know, a lot. I mean, if that’s what you want.”

“You know it is. But it might not be what he wants. I mean, it probably isn’t. And that’s—” Madeline couldn’t bring herself to say, That’s okay. She loved Greyson. And he loved them, but when Randi was back, he would want to go home. It was inevitable, it was probably—maybe—even right, but the thought broke her heart.

“It’ll work out,” he said. Madeline wished she could share his certainty. The fishing lines fluttered in the breeze, the bobbers bobbed. She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land—wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always Unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on its landscape for a moment in time. It reminded her over and over that there was only now. The future would come, Unfolding itself as it did.

“It will,” he said, giving her a funny little smile. “Things do. Not the way you expect, but still all right.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Paul studied her a moment and then shuffled through his layers of clothes for a pocket, fished around for something, and came Up with a folded piece of paper. He handed it to her. She Unfolded it and frowned, not remembering at first, and then remembering and being baffled. It was a letter. Dear Paul, it said. We miss you. That’s all I’m writing to say. We’re okay, but—

“Where’d you get this?”

“Greyson sent it to me. Last year before I came back.”

“How did he get it?”

Paul shrugged. “Don’t know. But things do work out.”

Madeline decided it would be silly to be embarrassed by this revealing letter now. After all, things had worked out. And Greyson—what nerve. She smiled to herself. She read the letter, studied the little drawings. They were pretty good, she could see from this remove of a little more than a year. They had charm. They gave her an idea for the book she was going to illustrate. It was a self-published thing a woman in town had done, nothing big, but she liked the story and it would pay a little.

An hour passed. Her feet began to get very cold. She wondered when they would eat the sack lunch they’d packed.

“Hey,” Paul hissed. “Look.”

The bobber quivered, then dipped down into the water. Paul grabbed the pole from where he propped it in the snow, fed out a little line. The bobber rose and dipped again, faster and deeper. Madeline stared at it, transfixed. The possibility that they might catch their dinner galvanized her. She glanced Up at Paul and saw a look of concentrated glee on his face. She watched in anticipation for what would happen next.