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patiently.
    And then, one day, she wasn’t.
     
    After Seth headed down to the writers’ room, Georgie decided to try calling Neal again.
    He picked up after three rings. “Hello?”
    No. It wasn’t Neal. “Alice? Is that you?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s Mommy.”
    “I know. Your song played when the phone rang.”
    “What’s my song?”
    Alice started singing “Good Day Sunshine.”
    Georgie bit her lip. “That’s my song?”
    “Yep.”
    “That’s a good song.”
    “Yep.”
    “Hey,” Georgie said, “where’s Daddy?”
    “Outside.”
    “Outside?”
    “He’s shoveling the snow,” Alice said. “There’s snow here. We’re gonna have a white Christmas.”
    “That’s lucky. Did you have a good plane trip?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What was the best part? . . . Alice?” The girls liked answering the phone—and they loved calling people—but they always lost interest once they were on the line. “ Alice . Are you watching TV?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Pause it and talk to Mommy.”
    “I can’t. Grandma doesn’t have pause.”
    “Then turn it off for a minute.”
    “I don’t know how.”
    “Okay, just . . .” Georgie tried not to sound irritated. “I really miss you.”
    “I miss you, too.”
    “I love you guys . . . Alice?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Let me talk to Noomi.”
    There was some shuffling, then a thump like somebody had dropped the phone—then finally, “Meow?”
    “Noomi? It’s Mommy.”
    “Meow.”
    “Meow. What are you doing?”
    “We’re watching Chip ’n’ Dale.”
    “Was Grandma happy to see you?”
    “She said we could watch Chip ’n’ Dale.”
    “Okay. I love you.”
    “You’re the best mommy in the world!”
    “Thanks. Hey, Noomi, tell Daddy I called. Okay?”
    “Meow.”
    “Meow. Tell Daddy, okay?”
    “Meow!”
    “Meow.” Georgie ended the call, then fidgeted with her phone for a minute, flipping through a few photos of the girls. She hated talking to them on the phone; it made them feel farther away. And it made her feel helpless. Like, even if she heard something bad happening, there’d be nothing she could do to stop it. One time Georgie had called home from the freeway, and all she could do was listen while Alice dropped the phone in her cereal bowl, then tried to decide whether to pick it up.
    Plus . . . the girls’ voices were higher on the phone. They sounded younger, and Georgie could hear their every breath. It just always made her realize that she was missing them. Actually missing them. That they kept on growing and changing when she wasn’t there.
    If Georgie didn’t talk to her kids all day, it was easier to pretend like their whole world froze in place while she was at work.
    She called them every day. Usually twice.
     
    Georgie and Seth and Scotty worked on Passing Time long after dark. They worked until Scotty fell asleep with his head tipped back over the edge of his chair, his mouth hanging open. Seth wanted to leave him like that. “At least we know he’ll be here on time tomorrow.”
    But Georgie took pity on him. She poured three packets of Sweet’N Low into Scotty’s mouth, and he woke up sneezing. Then she made him drink half a can of flat Diet Coke to perk him up before he drove home.
    She and Seth stayed and stared at the whiteboard for a while after Scotty left. They’d mostly worked on characters today—drawing a sprawled-out family tree showing how everyone on the show was connected, and brainstorming stories that could branch out from each of them.
    A lot of what they were doing was just remembering all the ideas they’d come up with over the years, some of which had definitely expired. (Chloe decides to be emo but never figures out what it means . Adam is overly defensive of Monica Lewinsky.) They’d been talking about these characters for so long, Georgie could see them in her head—she could do all their voices.
    Seth pulled down a few notecards they’d taped to the wall. “It’s still good, right? Inherently? The