“Take the pills back to Elaine. Arlo needs them.”

“We haven’t looked in this house yet.”

“I’ll do it. You just go back, okay?” She handed the girl her pillowcase of pill bottles and gave her a nudge toward the door. “Please, go now.”

“But-”

“Go.”

Only after the girl had left the house did Maura cross the room. She stared at what Grace had not seen. The first thing she’d spotted was a birdcage, the dead canary lying on the bottom, just a tiny mound of yellow on the newsprint cage liner.

She turned and focused on the floor, on what had stopped her in her tracks: A smear of brown tracked across the pine planks. Following the drag mark, she moved into the hallway and came at last to the staircase.

There she halted, staring at a frozen puddle of blood at the bottom of the steps.

As her gaze lifted toward the second floor, she imagined a body tumbling down those steep stairs, could almost hear the crack of a skull as it bounced down the steps and smashed onto the floor near her feet. Someone fell here, she thought.

Or was pushed.

BY THE TIME she walked back into their house, Doug had already returned with their belongings from the Jeep. He unzipped Arlo’s backpack and dumped the contents onto the coffee table. She saw sinus tablets and nose spray, sunscreen and ChapStick, plus a whole drugstore’s supply of toiletries. Everything a man needed to stay well groomed, but nothing to help him stay alive. Only when Doug unzipped one of the side pockets did he find the pill bottle.

“Valium, five milligrams. As needed for back spasms,” he read. “It’ll help him get through this.”

“Doug,” Maura said softly. “In one of the houses, I found-” She stopped as Grace and Elaine walked in the room.

“You found what?” Doug asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”

Doug spread out all the medications that they’d scavenged. “Tetracycline. Amoxicillin.” He shook his head. “If his leg gets infected, he’s going to need better antibiotics than these.”

“At least we found some Percocet,” said Maura, uncapping the bottle. “But there’s only a dozen pills left. Do we have anything else?”

Elaine said, “I always have some codeine in my…” She stopped, frowning at what Doug had brought back from the Jeep. “Where’s my purse?”

“I only found one purse.” Doug pointed to it.

“That’s Maura’s. Where’s mine?”

“Elaine, that’s all I saw in the Jeep.”

“Then you missed it. There’s codeine in it.”

“I’ll go back for it later, okay?” He knelt down beside Arlo. “I’m going to give you some pills, buddy.”

“Knock me out,” whimpered Arlo. “Can’t stand this pain.”

“This should help.” Doug gently lifted Arlo’s head, slipped two Valiums and two Percocets into his mouth, and gave him a swallow of whiskey. “There you go. We’ll give that medicine some time to work first.”

“First?” Arlo coughed on the whiskey, and fresh tears leaked from his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“We need to work on your leg.”

“No. No, don’t touch it.”

“Your circulation’s been cut off by the tourniquet. If we don’t loosen it, your leg’s going to die.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to tie off the ruptured artery and control the bleeding that way. I think you’ve damaged either the posterior or anterior tibial artery. If one of them is still intact, it might be enough circulation to supply your leg with blood. And keep it alive.”

“That means you’re going to have to dig around in there.”

“We need to isolate which artery is bleeding.”

Arlo shook his head. “No way.”

“If it’s the anterior tibial, we only have to slide between a few muscles, just below the knee.”

“Forget it. Don’t touch me.”

“I’m thinking of what’s best for you. There’ll be a little pain, but in the end you’ll be glad I-”

“A little? A little?” Arlo croaked out a desperate laugh. “Stay the fuck away from me!”

“Listen, I know it hurts, but-”

“You don’t know shit, Doug.”

“Arlo.”

“Stay away! Elaine, for God’s sake, make him stay away!”

Doug rose to his feet. “We’ll let you rest, okay? Grace, you stay here with him.” He looked at Maura and Elaine. “Let’s go in the other room.”

They met in the kitchen. Elaine had left a pot of water to heat on the woodstove, and it was now simmering, ready to sterilize instruments. Through the steam-fogged window, Maura could see the sun was already dropping toward the horizon.

“You can’t force him to go through this,” said Maura.

“It’s for his own good.”

“Surgery without anesthesia? Think about it, Doug.”

“Give the Valium some time to work. He’ll calm down.”

“But he won’t be unconscious. He’ll still be able to feel the incision.”

“He’ll thank us for it later. Trust me.” Doug turned to Elaine. “You agree with me, don’t you? We can’t just give up on his leg.”

Elaine hesitated, obviously torn between the two terrible options. “I don’t know…”

“Ligating the artery is the only way we’ll be able to remove that tourniquet. The only way we can restore some blood flow.”

“Do you really think you can do it?”

“It’s a straightforward procedure. Maura and I both know the anatomy.”

“But he’ll be moving around,” said Maura. “There could be a lot more blood loss. I don’t agree with this, Doug.”

“The alternative is to sacrifice the limb.”

“I think the limb is already a lost cause.”

“Well, I don’t.” Doug turned back to Elaine. “We need to vote on this. Do we try to save his leg or not?”

Elaine took a breath and nodded. “I guess I’m with you.”

Of course she would be. Arlo was right. She always sides with Doug.

“Maura?” he asked.

“You know what I think.”

He glanced out the window. “We don’t have a lot of time. We’re losing our daylight and I’m not sure we’ll be able to see enough with the kerosene lamp.” He looked at Maura. “Elaine and I both vote to go ahead with this.”

“You forgot a vote. There’s Arlo’s, and he made it pretty clear what he wants.”

“He’s not competent to make any decisions right now.”

“It’s his leg.”

“And we can save it! But I need your help. Maura, I can’t do it without you.”

“Dad?” Grace was standing in the kitchen doorway. “He doesn’t look so good.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not talking anymore. And he’s snoring really loud.”

Doug nodded. “The drugs must have kicked in. Let’s get some instruments boiling. And we’ll need needles. A spool of thread.” He looked at Maura. “Are you with me or not?”

It doesn’t matter what I say, she thought. He’s going to do it anyway.

“I’ll see what I can find,” she said.

IT TOOK THEM an hour to collect and sterilize all the items they’d managed to scavenge. By then, the window admitted only a weak afternoon glow. They lit the kerosene lamp, and by the light of the hissing flame, Arlo’s eyes were sunken in shadow, as though his soft tissues were collapsing, his body consuming itself. Doug peeled back the blanket, releasing the sharp smell of the urine-saturated rug.

The leg was as pale as a shank of cold meat.

No amount of scrubbing could cleanse all the bacteria from their hands, but Doug and Maura tried anyway, lathering and rinsing until their skin was raw. Only then did Doug reach for the blade. It was a paring knife, the most delicate one they could find, and they had sharpened it before sterilizing. As he knelt over the leg, the first hint of uncertainty flickered in his eyes. He glanced up at Maura.

“Ready to release the tourniquet?” he said.

“You haven’t tied off the artery yet,” said Elaine.

“We need to identify which artery it is. And the only way is to see where he’s bleeding. You need to hold him still, Elaine. Because he’s going to wake up.” He glanced at Maura and nodded.

She barely loosened the tourniquet and a spurt of blood exploded from the wound, splattering Doug’s cheek.