“Ed.”

Then a moment later—or maybe an hour:

“Livvy.”

My voice was a puff of breath. I could see it, a little spirit floating before my face, ghostly white in the frozen air.

Somewhere nearby, a chirp, over and over, ceaselessly—a single tone, like the call of a demented bird.

Then it stopped.

My vision swam in a low tide of red. My head throbbed. My ribs ached. My back felt broken. My throat felt seared.

The airbag was crumpled against the side of my face. The dashboard glowed crimson. The windshield sagged toward me, cracked and slack.

I frowned. Some process behind my eyes kept rebooting itself, some system glitch, a buzz in the machine.

I breathed, choked. Heard myself croak with pain. Swiveled my head, felt the top of my skull twist on the ceiling. That was unusual, wasn’t it? And I could taste saliva welling in the roof of my mouth. How was—

The buzz ceased.

We were upside down.

I choked again. My hands flew down, buried themselves in the fabric around my head, as though they could upend the car, push me upright. I heard myself whine, splutter.

Turned my head farther. And saw Ed, facing away from me, still. Blood seeped from his ear.

I said his name, or tried to, one breathy syllable in the chill, a little cloud of smoke. My windpipe was sore. The seat belt had drawn tight around my throat.

I licked my lips. My tongue dipped into a hollow in the upper gum. I’d lost a tooth.

The seat belt was slicing against my waist, wire-taut. With my right hand I pressed the buckle, pressed harder, gasped as it clicked. The belt slithered from my body and I slumped toward the roof.

That chirp. The seat-belt alert, stuttering. Then silent.

Breath fountained from my mouth, red in the dashboard light, as I splayed my hands on the ceiling. Braced them. Pivoted my head.

Olivia was strapped into the backseat, suspended there, her ponytail dangling. I crooked my neck, squared my shoulder against the ceiling, reached for her cheek. My fingers rattled.

Her skin was ice.

My elbow folded; my legs dropped to one side, landed hard on the spider-webbed glass of the sunroof. It crunched beneath me. I scrambled to right myself, knees scuffling, and crawled toward her as my heart knocked against my chest. Seized her shoulders in my hands. Shook.

Screamed.

I thrashed. She thrashed with me, her hair swinging.

“Livvy,” I shouted, my throat flaming, and tasted blood in my mouth, on my lips.

“Livvy,” I called, and tears shot down my cheeks.

“Livvy,” I breathed, and her eyes opened.

My heart failed for an instant.

She looked at me, inside me, mouthed a single word:

“Mommy.”

I jammed my thumb into her seat-belt buckle. The belt released with a hiss, and I cradled her head as she descended, caught her body in my arms, her limbs spilling, jangling against each other like wind chimes. One of her arms felt loose within its sleeve.

I unrolled her along the sunroof. “Shh,” I told her, even though she hadn’t made a sound, even though her eyes were shut again. She looked like a princess.

“Hey.” I shook her shoulder. She looked at me once more. “Hey,” I repeated. I tried to smile. My face felt numb.

I scuttled toward the door, grasped the handle, yanked. Yanked again. Heard the snap of the latch. I pushed against the window, strained my fingers upon the glass. The door swung wide without a sound, gliding into the dark.

I stretched forward and pressed my hands to the ground outside, felt the burning snow against my palms. Dug my elbows in, steadied my knees, and pulled. Dragged my torso out of the car, flopping onto the frost. It squeaked beneath me. I kept dragging. My hips. My thighs. Knees. Shins. Feet. The cuff around my ankle snagged on a coat hook; I hitched it loose, slid free of the car.

And rolled onto my back. My spine went electric with pain. I sucked in air. Winced. My head rolled, as though my neck had quit.

No time. No time. I gathered myself, collected my legs, reassembled them into working order, and knelt by the car. Looked around.

Looked up. My vision wheeled, reeled.

The sky was a bowl of stars and space. The moon loomed planet-huge, solar-bright, and the canyon below blazed with shadow and light, crisp as a woodcut. The snowfall had nearly ceased, just a spray of stray flakes floating through the air. It looked like a new world.

And the sound . . .

Quiet. Utter, final quiet. Not a breath of wind, not a shift of branches. A silent film, a still photograph. I turned on my knees, heard snow crumpling beneath them.

Back to earth. The car was pitched forward, its nose bashed against the ground, its rear seesawed slightly upward. I saw its chassis exposed, like the underside of an insect. I shuddered. My spine twitched.

I dove back through the doorway, hooked my fingers in the down of Olivia’s jacket. And hauled. Hauled her across the sunroof, hauled her past the headrest, hauled her out of the car. Wrapped my arms around her, her little body rag-limp in my arms. Spoke her name. Spoke it again. She opened her eyes.

“Hi,” I said.

Her eyelids fluttered shut.

I laid her beside the car, then tugged her back in case it should capsize. Her head drifted toward her shoulder; I held it—gently, gently—and turned her face toward the sky again.

I paused, my lungs working like a bellows. Looked at my baby, an angel in the snow. Touched her wounded arm. She didn’t react. I touched it again, more firmly, and saw a wince warp her face.

Ed next.

I crawled inside once more before realizing that there was no way to yank him out through the backseat. I reversed, shuffling my shins backward; cleared the car; reached for the front-door handle. Squeezed. Squeezed again. The lock caught, clicked. The door flapped open.

There he was, his skin warm red in the woozy ambulance light of the dashboard. I wondered about that light, how the battery had survived the impact, as I released his seat belt. He slouched toward me, unspooling, like a tugged knot. I gripped him under the armpits.

And dragged him, my head knocking against the gearshift, his body trawling along the ceiling. When we emerged from the car, I saw his face was rinsed in blood.

I stood, pulled, staggered backward until we were next to Olivia, then rested him beside her. She stirred. He didn’t. I seized his hand, peeled his sleeve back from the wrist, pressed my fingers into the skin. His pulse was flickering.

We were out of the car, all of us, beneath the sprawl of stars, at the floor of the universe. I heard a steady locomotive chug—my own breath. I was panting. Sweat slid down my sides, slicked my neck.

I bent an arm behind my back, felt carefully, fingers climbing my spine like a ladder. Between my shoulder blades the vertebrae flamed with pain.

I inhaled, exhaled. Watched breath spout feebly from Olivia’s mouth, from Ed’s.

I turned around.

My eyes scaled what looked like a hundred yards of sheer cliff, blasted fluorescent white in the moonlight. The road lay unseen somewhere overhead, but there was no climbing toward it, no climbing anywhere. We’d crash-landed on a small shelf, a little ledge of rock jutting from the side of the mountain; beyond and below, oblivion. Stars, snow, space. Silence.

My phone.

I slapped my pockets—front, back, coat—and then remembered how Ed had clutched it, waved it away from me; how it had spun to the floor, danced there, rattling between my feet, that name blaring on the screen.

I plunged into the car for the third time, swept the ceiling with my hands, finally found it lodged against the windshield, screen intact. It was a shock to see it so pristine; my husband was bleeding, my daughter was injured, my body was damaged, our SUV was destroyed—but the phone had survived unmarked. A relic from another era, another earth. 10:27 p.m., it read. We’d been off the road for almost a half hour.

Crouching in the cabin of the car, I slid my thumb across the screen—911—and lifted the phone to my ear, felt it tremble against my cheek.

Nothing. I frowned.

I ended the call, retreated from the car, inspected the screen. No Signal. I knelt in the snow. Dialed again.

Nothing.

I dialed twice more.

Nothing. Nothing.

I stood, stabbed the speakerphone button, thrust my arm into the air. Nothing.

I circled the car, stumbling in the snow. Dialed again. And again. Four times, eight times, thirteen times. I lost count.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I screamed. It burst from me, scouring my throat, cracking the night like a pane of ice, fading away in a flock of echoes. I screamed until my tongue burned, until my voice gave out.

Whirled around. Dizzied myself. Hurled the phone to the ground. It sank into the snow. Picked it up, its screen dewy, and flung it down again, farther away. Panic surged through me. I lunged, dug through the frost. My hand closed on it. Shook off the snow, dialed again.

Nothing.

I was back with Olivia and Ed; they lay there, side by side, still, luminous beneath the moon.

A sob kicked its way to my mouth, desperate for air, thrashed past my lips. My knees buckled beneath me, folded like switchblades. I melted to the ground. I crawled between my husband and my daughter. I cried.

When I awoke, my fingers were cool and blue, curled around the phone. 12:58 a.m. Its battery was drained, just 11 percent remaining. Didn’t matter, I reasoned; I couldn’t call 911, couldn’t call anyone.

I tried to all the same. Nothing.

I rotated my head to the left, to the right: Ed and Livvy, on either side of me, their breathing shallow but steady, Ed’s face spackled with dried blood, Olivia’s cheeks plastered with streaks of hair. I cupped her forehead in my hand. Cold. Were we better off sheltering in the car? But what if . . . I didn’t know; what if it rolled? What if it exploded?

I sat up. Stood up. Looked at the hulk of the car. Surveyed the sky—that ripe moon, that bath of stars. Turned, slowly, toward the mountain.

As I approached it, I brandished my phone and held it in front of me, like a wand. Drew my thumb up the screen, tapped the flashlight button. Hard light, a tiny star in my hand.

The rock face, in the glare, was flat and faultless. Nowhere to jam my fingers, nothing to seize, not a weed or a branch, not a lip of rock—just soil and scree, forbidding as a wall. I walked the width of our little cliff, scanned every inch. I aimed the light upward until the night smothered it.

Nothing. Everything had become nothing.

10 percent power. 1:11 a.m.

As a girl I’d loved constellations, made a study of them, mapped whole skies across scrolls of butcher paper in the backyard on summer evenings, bluebottles drowsing around me, the grass soft beneath my elbows. Now they paraded overhead, the winter heroes, spangled against the night: Orion, bright and belted; Canis Major, loping after him; the Pleiades, strung out like jewels along Taurus’s shoulder. Gemini. Perseus. Cetus.

In my wounded voice I murmured their names like a spell to Livvy and Ed, their heads on my chest, rising and falling with my breath. My fingers stroked their hair, his lips, her cheek.

All those stars, smoking cold. We shivered beneath them. We slept.

4:34 a.m. I shuddered myself awake. Inspected both of them—Olivia first, then Ed. I applied some snow to his face. He didn’t flinch. I rubbed it against his skin, sloughing off the blood; he twitched. “Ed,” I said, jostling his shoulder. No response. I checked his pulse again. Faster, fainter.

My stomach complained. We never ate dinner, I remembered. They must be famished.

I ducked into the car, where the dashboard light had dimmed, almost died. There it was, squashed against the rear passenger window: the duffel bag I’d packed with PB&Js and juice boxes. As I gripped the strap in my fist, the light went out completely.

Back outside, I peeled the plastic wrap from a sandwich, shook it to one side; a strand of wind caught it, and I watched as it floated up and away, gossamer, like a fairy, a will-o’-the-wisp. I tore off a corner of bread, brought it to Olivia. “Hey,” I murmured, my fingers playing against her cheek, and her eyes drew open. “Here,” I offered, tucking the bread into her mouth. Her lips parted; the bread bobbed there, like a drowning swimmer, before sinking to her tongue. I picked the straw off the juice box, stabbed it in. Lemonade bubbled through it, dribbled onto the snow. I pushed an arm beneath Olivia’s head and lifted her face to the straw, squeezed the box. It overflowed her mouth. She spluttered.

I lifted her head farther, and she sipped, hummingbird gulps. After a moment, her skull lolled into my hand, and her eyes slipped shut. I laid her softly on the ground.

Ed next.

I knelt beside him, but he wouldn’t open his mouth, wouldn’t even open his eyes. I tapped the pinch of bread against his lips, stroked his cheek as though it might unhinge his jaw, yet still he didn’t move. Panic rose inside me. I put my head to his face. A current of breath, weak but insistent, warmed my skin. I exhaled.

If he couldn’t eat, he could still drink, surely. I rubbed his dry lips with a bit of snow, then slid the straw into his mouth. Clenched my fingers around the box. The juice ran down either side of his chin, clotted in his stubble. “Come on,” I pleaded, but liquid kept hurrying down his jaw.

I withdrew the straw and placed another dollop of frost on his lips, then on his tongue. Let it melt down his throat.

I sat on the snow again, sucked on the straw. The lemonade was too sweet. I drained the box anyway.

From the car I pulled a duffel bag stuffed with down parkas and ski pants. I yanked them out, laid them across Livvy and Ed.

Looked up at the sky. It was impossibly huge.

Light settled on my lids like a weight. I opened them.

And squinted. Above us stretched the sky, unbroken, unending, a deep sea of clouds. Snow sifted down in dandelion flakes, burst against my skin. I checked the phone. 7:28 a.m. 5 percent power.

Olivia had shifted slightly in her sleep, banked herself upon her left arm, the right trailing loose along her side. Her cheek was pressed into the ground. I tipped her onto her back, mopped the snow from her skin. Gently thumbed her ear.

Ed hadn’t moved. I leaned into his face. He was still breathing.

I’d pushed the phone into my jeans pocket. Now I fished it out, squeezed it for luck, dialed 911 again. For a breathless second I imagined it ringing, could almost hear it, trilling in my ear.

Nothing. I stared at the screen.

Stared at the car, turtled on its back, helpless, like a wounded animal. It looked unnatural, even embarrassed.

Stared at the valley beneath us, spiky with trees, a thin silver ribbon of river unfurled in the distance.

I stood up. I turned around.

The mountain reared over me. In the daylight, I could see that I’d misjudged how far we’d dropped—we were at least two hundred yards from the road above, and the stone face looked even more impassable, more impossible, than it had the night before. Up, up, up my gaze climbed, until it reached the summit.

My hand wandered to my throat. We’d plunged all that way. We’d survived.

I tilted my head back farther still, to take in the sky. And squinted. It all seemed too vast, somehow, too massive. I felt like a miniature in a dollhouse. I could see myself from without, from afar, tiny, a speck. I spun around, wobbled.

My vision swam. Something twinged in my legs.

I shook my head, rubbed my eyes. The world subsided, retreated to its boundaries.

For a few hours I dozed beside Ed and Olivia. When I awoke—11:10 a.m.—the snow was crashing on us in waves, wind cracking like whips overhead. A low growl of thunder sounded nearby. I swept flakes from my face, jolted to my feet.

That same flutter in my vision, like ripples in water, and this time my knees snapped toward each other, magnet-jerked. I started to slump toward the ground. “No,” I said, my voice raw and chapped. I swung a hand to the snow, propped myself up.

What was wrong with me?

No time. No time. I pushed against the ground, stood. Saw Ed and Olivia at my feet, half-submerged.

And I began dragging them into the car.

How did the time creep by? It seemed, during the following year, that the months were passing more quickly than those hours with Ed and Livvy on that inverted ceiling, the snow rising against the windows like a tide, the windshield creaking and popping under the weight of white.

I sang to her, pop songs, nursery rhymes, tunes I invented, as the noise outside grew louder and the light within got dimmer. I studied the whorls of her ear, traced them with my finger, hummed into them. I wrapped my arms around his, braided my legs with his, twined my hands with his. I wolfed a sandwich, guzzled a juice box. I unscrewed a bottle of wine before remembering that it would dehydrate me. But I wanted it. I wanted it.

We were underground, it felt; we had burrowed someplace secret and dark, someplace sheltered from the world. I didn’t know when we would emerge. How we would emerge. If.

At some point my phone died. I fell asleep at 3:40 p.m., 2 percent power, and when I awoke, the screen had gone dark.

The world was silent, except for the scream of wind, and Livvy, tugging breaths from the air, and Ed, a faint crackle in his throat. And me, sobs guttering somewhere in my body.

Quiet. Absolute quiet.

I came to in that womb of a cabin, my eyes bleary. But then I saw light leaking into the car, saw the dim glow behind the windshield, and heard the silence the way I’d heard the noise. It inhabited the car like a living thing.

I uncoiled myself and reached for the door handle. It clacked reassuringly, but the door wouldn’t budge.

No.

I scuttled on my knees, rolled onto my aching back, crammed my feet against the door and pushed. It budged against the snow, then stopped. I kicked the window, clopped it with my heels. The door stuttered open. A little avalanche piled into the car.

I slithered outside on my stomach, crushing my eyes shut against the light. When I opened them again, I could see dawn boiling over the distant mountains. I rose to my knees, surveyed the new world around me: the valley, drenched in white; that faraway river; the plush snowfall beneath my feet.

I swayed on my knees. And then I heard a crack, and I knew it was the windshield collapsing.

I sank one foot then the other into the snow, stumbled to the front of the car, saw the glass staved in. Back to the passenger door, back inside. Once more I pulled them from the wreckage, Livvy first, then Ed; once more I arranged them side by side on the ground.

And as I stood above them, my breath steaming before me, my vision went fuzzy yet again. The sky seemed to bulge toward me, pressing upon me; I crumpled, eyelids clenched, heart hammering.

I howled, a wild thing. I turned onto my stomach, flung my arms around Olivia and Ed, clutched them to myself as I whimpered into the snow.

That was how they found us.