He unbuttoned his shirt. “Here. Take it. Take whatever you want.”

Bardem reached and took hold of the shirt, flinching slightly. The man could see Bardem’s pistol tucked in the waist of his pants.

“Please … just don’t hurt me. I have a family.”

“That’s good.” Bardem nodded. “Go home to your family.”

The man watched Bardem get in the Navigator and close the door. He watched the car roll past him down the highway. He stood there in the road, watching the taillights until they disappeared in the snow.

IV

Doyle tracked the girl for four miles, and it was very cold. Tree-strewn hills with caps of white. The path just kept going. The footprints in the snow. The girl and, behind her, the man. Her father: Bardem. She had run hard and far. He found a red glove and followed the tracks across a wide field until the steps of the girl shallowed and then disappeared. No sign. Bardem had scoured the woods for her, but there was nothing. He had been bleeding. He had given up. The frigid snow had hardened in the night, and she was light. Doyle went back and examined the girl’s tracks where they ended. He kept looking.

It was her hat he saw first. Lying on the lone hill. A short ways on, he came to her coat. Around him the trees were silent. The lightening sky. When he saw her, he coughed.

She lay with her walnut hair strewn across the snow.

He stopped.

He fell to his knees and bent his head.

III

They let Jack go to her and sit beside her in the snow. Just her and him. She had taken off her coat, and her hair was tangled and frozen and her skin was blue but she was still Ava. His Ava. He took a few breaths and just sat there and held her hand. The sun coming up in the cemetery trees and the glinting light all about her. This unbearable pain in his chest.

“I’m not ready,” he said. “I’m not ready.”

He stayed a long time. When he stopped crying he stood to go, but then he turned and came back. He lay down by her. He brushed the snow from her hair and kissed her head. The dried blood there. This vacuum of hushed loud space. When divinity enters a place and you feel it. He closed his eyes and talked to her. Things never said. I love you. You have my whole heart too. He kept his eyes closed and listened. She knows. She knows. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay it’s okay.” He held her hand and just stayed there. “I won’t forget. I swear it.”

All the things you did. You showed me.

I won’t forget.

II

He was right.