MOLLIE STAYED AT THE hospital all night. She stayed, numb, until somebody (the cop? a doctor? she barely remembered the conversation) convinced her that Dad, Brent, Mick, Troy, and Jim had been stabilized after their first rounds of emergency surgery. Or, at least, that they weren’t in immediate danger of dying from their wounds the second she opened a portal in space leading back to the farm. Which was about all the reassurance on offer; Jim and Troy wouldn’t come out of emergency surgery for hours. The doctors were still in triage mode; saving the remains of the brothers’ faces had never been an option.

There were physical injuries and there were mental wounds. Dad and the boys would have a crippling case of both. Mollie wore one around her neck and another in the images that snaked through the dark spaces of her mind every time she closed her eyes.

She stepped from a hospital stairwell into the barn. Staring at the pile of blood-spattered loose change from the slot machines, she realized her mistake. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to steal some food from the fridge and go to her Bismarck bolt-hole. She entered the farmhouse the regular way, through the kitchen door. And was immediately enveloped with a warm buttery, creamy, beefy aroma: Mom was cooking a big pot of stroganoff.

Oh, shit. Mom, thought Mollie. She’d never thought to go get Mom, or warn her that half the family was in the hospital with grievous injuries. The kitchen door banged shut behind her before she could catch it. Mom came into the kitchen a second later, as though summoned by the racket. She still wore her apron, and carried a dish towel draped over one shoulder.

From the other room came the sound of a TV rapidly flipping through the channels. The younger boys—Adam, Michael, Jeff—hated Wheel of Fortune and always changed the channel when Mom and Dad were out of the room. They must have come home from school while Mollie was at the hospital. Rural bus routes sometimes got them home an hour or more after school let out.

Mom said, “You all almost done out there? Whatever stupid scheme you got going now, it’s taking your father and the older boys away from their chores. You come and go as you please, dropping in when it’s convenient, or when you’re hungry, or when you have laundry you don’t feel like doing yourself, but you forget this is a farm with work to be done.”

Who would do the work now? How long would they be in the hospital? Even after they’re discharged, even if they eventually heal, it’ll take a long time before …

“Mollie!” Mom snapped her fingers at Mollie. Drying her hands on the dish towel, she said, “I asked you a question. How much longer are you gonna be wasting everyone’s time in the barn?”

“There’s been … Mom, something happened. Something bad.”