Evangeline went completely still, neither speaking nor moving. It was eerie, and Scully would almost have preferred the all-out attack.

“Get more snow,” he said. “Take both buckets outside and fill them.”

She hesitated, then went off to do his bidding; he heard the buckets rattle, raised his eyes as the door opened, felt the chill rush of the wind. When he looked down at Abigail’s little face, still flushed for all the snow, she was gazing up at him.

“I can make an angel,” she said, in a voice that was as spindly as bird bones, and snapped his heart in two like a dry twig. “If I move my arms and legs, it’ll make an angel.”

Scully smiled at her. “Yes,” he said. She was talking about the kind of angels a child makes in the clean winter snow, he hoped, and not the real thing. Please, God, not the real thing.

Evangeline came back with both buckets full of snow, and that was good, because the first batch was melting fast from the heat of Abigail’s flesh. The child’s eyes were closed again, and she was still flushed, still hot, despite it all. Scully emptied both buckets over Abigail and once again covered her, in just the way children bury each other in the sand at the seashore.

“She’ll freeze,” Evangeline said. Her eyes were big as Abigail’s had ever been, and there were deep shadows etched beneath them. Her cheeks looked hollow, as though she’d been keeping her vigil for days instead of just hours, and Scully wondered, even then, when there was so little time for wondering, how he was ever going to leave her. Spring or no spring, Big John or no Big John.

“Close the door,” he answered, returning his attention to Abigail, “or we’ll all freeze.” He didn’t want to risk more than ten minutes of chilling the child this way. He was no doctor, after all—the snow-packing technique was merely something he’d read about once in an almanac, but it made sense. “Get another nightgown ready for her,” he said, “and make sure there are plenty of covers on the bed.”

Evangeline obeyed readily, which would have been a phenomenon akin to a shower of stars at high noon, in just about any other situation.

Scully lifted Abigail out of the washtub, dripping wet and chilled through to the bone. Evangeline appeared with the requested nightgown and some toweling, stripped and dried the child right there, dressed her again, and carried her to the bed.

“What do we do now?” she asked, looking down at her daughter.

Scully stood behind her, and set his hands on her shoulders, kneading the taut muscles a little. “We wait,” he said.

She turned and looked up at him and in that moment he would have done anything, anything in the world, to take the burden of Abigail’s illness off both their shoulders, hers and the child’s, and carry it himself. As things stood, he could do little besides stand by, adding his hopes to Evangeline’s.