He closed his eye and tried to think of something to say to the girl who sat by him so sternly and saw him all bruised up and gashed. He could feel one eye swollen shut. He was soaked in sweat. He opened his good eye a little, and Ava lifted his head and put two pills on his tongue and brought a cup to his lips.

“Antibiotics. Swallow.”

The room fell into a spin. He lay back into the blankets with Matty near while Ava faded off to a dim color, leaving the mind to drift. A new place would have to be found. Somewhere far. A safe place they wouldn’t find. Pack up in the morning. Take the duffel. Matty’s toys. Hammer, knife. Cooking things.

The girl will have to go.

“We’ll find someplace nice,” he said to Matty, or didn’t. “You’ll see.”

He slept in and out of fever sweats, flinched in his sleep at flying axes aimed at the tender head. Red stood over him. Voice of the hatted man, who said it was good to be brave. Horrid cold … and then running on raw feet … a wolf snapping white teeth …

“You’ll see. We might get a dog, even.”

The girl came to him as still as darkness and gave him sips of sugar water. Heat flushed through him and when the water hit his stomach, those resentful muscles clenched tight to heave rebellion. She held him while he shivered. They might have found the truck and followed his bootprints through the snow.

“Lock the door,” he said.

She said words back, but shallow sleep took hold and deepened while memories seeped from his veins to surface in his mind. Mom’s body swayed from the ceiling fan, one foot kicked free of the slipper … She is under all that snow … because she killed herself and you buried her, and there is nothing else to say about it.

Wind whistled outside and fluttered towels nailed to window frames.

Night shaved off in chunks.

XIX

Let’s be clear.

I trust no one.

I put nothing in my heart.

At early dawn, Jack woke to Ava changing his bandage. Washing where the bullet had torn his skin away. Her head bent, her worried eyes. Frowning in concentration. She wore the juniper coat unbuttoned and beneath was a shift of white, and her hair was wild. The light around her head like a crown. Wild tendrils aglow in the light of the fire. She looked at him. “The bleeding won’t stop.”

“I feel pretty good.”

“You feel pretty good. Well, you look like shit.”

This made him smile. She seemed angry. Or obstinate. Maybe both.

“You need stitches,” she said. “Or something. I don’t even know what.”

He stopped smiling and shook his head, then winced when his bad eye throbbed. “I’m not goin’ to a doctor.”

She stared at him, defiant. Her hazel eyes radiant in the firelight.