When she is done she dries the area and cuts open packets of gauze and lays them over the gash and secures them with tape. She strips the safety wrapper from the syringe and sinks the needle through the seal into the vial of amoxicillin and draws back the plunger until it is full. Then she slides the needle into the fattiest tissue around the wound that she can find and slowly depresses the plunger. Her hands do not shake.

With a cool cloth she wipes the sweat from his forehead and washes the blood from around the bandage. She cleans up the blankets as best she can. Then she just looks at him. His hair plastered to his forehead. Slim chest rising and falling, and his stomach split by the rungs of his ribs. The swollen eye looks a little better.

There is nothing else to be done. Let him sleep. Sleep is needed most. Liquids. What else? Check on Matty, check the door. Fill a cup of water for when he wakes. More antibiotics in four hours.

She disinfects her hands again and puts everything in the paper bag. She checks on Matty. The cars are sitting in his lap unplayed with, and the cookies are uneaten beside him. His eyes are red. He shoves at them with his hand.

“It’s over,” she says.

He nods.

She crouches beside him. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“I know,” he says.

“Want to play cars with me?”

“It’s okay. I just want a little quiet time.”

She gets him a glass of milk. She checks the fire. The door. She fills the cup. When she can think of no other task, she goes to Jack and just sits by him. She looks at him. Lying so still. Pale and swollen, bruised nearly everywhere. Now she begins to shake.

She slips her hand into his and squeezes. He doesn’t respond.

It starts to snow. White snowflakes fall from the dark sky into the house, through the ceiling holes, glowing strangely in the waste, in the cold sunlight. Serene.

She sits with his hand in her lap.

Bardem parked under the cover of trees about five hundred yards from Llewyn Dahl’s place and slid the window down. It was late morning. Frigid air rolling off the river. A slight wind. He propped his elbow on the window edge and glassed the house with a pair of 12× binoculars. Smoke at the chimney pipe. Truck in the yard. Most called Llewyn by the name Red.

Bardem slowly turned the wheel on the binoculars, focusing the barrels. The lenses narrowed on a second vehicle. A red Caprice.