“Good morning,” says Alice, and the girl snaps to attention, looking guilty.

“Morning, ma’am,” she says, and sets her mop and bucket down, and begins a retreat to the north wing, presumably for more supplies.

“Did you not hear the phone, earlier?” Alice says. “Or the knocking?”

“No, ma’am,” says the girl. “I was out the back, putting the laundry on the line.”

•   •   •

Reluctantly, Alice jerks herself into action. She strides down the hallway, toward the bedroom where Peter is sleeping. She throws open the door, telling herself that she is unafraid of what—or whom—she’ll see inside.

But it’s only Peter in the bed, sleeping hard, one elbow crooked over his forehead, as if to block the light. She has not seen him in this way—asleep, or in a bed, or even supine—in a year. More.

She says his name aloud. Once, twice.

“What is it?” he mumbles, at last.

“It’s Barbara,” she says. “She’s gone missing.”

Alice Two Months Earlier June 1975

Following Barbara’s departure for Camp Emerson, it had taken Alice nearly a week to notice the padlock on her daughter’s bedroom door. Barbara’s room was on the other wing of the house; Alice had no reason to pass it.

But after six days of sitting in the sunroom, or lying in her bed, she had begun at last to feel lonely. Peter was gone, too; to Manhattan, most likely, though she could never keep track. And in the absence of her daughter and husband, the house had gone quiet.

And so, that morning, propelled from her chair by sheer boredom, Alice had decided to take a walk.

•   •   •

Now she stood outside her daughter’s room, holding the padlock in her hand, marveling at Barbara’s boldness. Surely she must have understood how angry Peter would be when he returned from his trip to find the doorframe damaged by the screws that held the lock in place. More than the doorframe, he would be angered by the implication of the act: that Barbara had any right to privacy, after the way she had recently behaved.

The lock, Alice knew, would have to be removed. The doorframe would have to be carefully repaired: that much was certain. Peter noticed everything about the house.

One of the gardeners made quick work of the lock. Promised to relay a message to a skillful carpenter he knew who could probably fix or replace the damaged wood.

“Thank you,” said Alice, absently. But she was already willing him away.

She didn’t want anyone watching her as she opened the door.

•   •   •

She smelled it before she saw it: fresh paint.

There, across one whole wall—the largest in the room—was some sort of—mural, Alice supposed, though she wouldn’t have used such a dignified word to describe the terrible pictures that loomed over Barbara’s bed.

The main motif was flags. A British one. An upside-down American. Then safety pins, axes, handcuffs, knives.

In one upper corner, a sun and a moon bearing human faces smiled and frowned at Alice.

So this, she thought, was what Barbara had been doing behind the door she’d kept closed for the better part of June. Blasting her terrible records and painting this terrible mural.

She had done this in Albany, too. She had painted her walls as a ten-year-old girl, but at least in that instance she had had the decency, the common sense, to ask Peter for permission. That mural was innocuous: a sun and clouds and mountains and what seemed to be Lake Joan.

This one was disturbing.

A surge of competing emotions rose inside Alice. One was fear: there would be hell to pay when Peter saw this. But some other emotion was present, too. And at last she realized, with a pang, that it was jealousy. Never once in Alice’s life had she ever felt the freedom to do something like this. To simply decide—I’m going to paint a mural today—and then undertake the project.

•   •   •

In a little room off the wine cellar were all the supplies used to maintain the house. There, Alice searched through racks of paint for the color she had chosen, when Barbara was born, for the room that would be hers at Self-Reliance.

There it was: Fawn Pink.

A beautiful shade of light rose.

•   •   •

Returning to the scene of Barbara’s crime with a roller and bucket in hand, Alice set to work.

By the time Peter returned from wherever he was, there would be no trace of the mural, or the lock.

Tracy June 1975

Their first week of Survival Classes had centered on orienting oneself in the woods. Their second week would center on keeping warm and sheltered.

T.J. Hewitt had led them to a quiet place in the forest. Now she stood still, hands on hips, one foot up on a root.

“What do you see?” she said.

Silence.

Then a younger girl raised her hand. “Trees?” she said.

Quiet laughter from the group; the girl reddened. She had not meant the answer to be funny.

But T.J. pressed on. “Very good,” she said. “What else?”

Rocks, they said. A boulder. Leaves. Pine needles. Dirt. Branches.

T.J. nodded. “All of these can be used in an emergency to keep you warm. The woods can be dangerous, but the woods are also generous in that way.”

She turned abruptly and walked ten feet in the direction of one of the shorter trees in her vicinity.

“This,” said T.J., “is a balsam fir. It’s one of the denser trees nearby, with nice thick foliage, and also one of the younger ones. See how it’s shorter than its neighbors? This means that its lower branches will form a nice shelter for you in the rain or snow, or even the cold.”

T.J. demonstrated: she angled her long body beneath the lowest branches of the tree, lying in a C shape around the trunk.

“I could stay here for the length of a passing storm,” said T.J. “But if I wanted to stay for longer than that, I’d have to get creative.”