“But how did I get all the way out here?” she mused, rubbing her bandaged head. She repeated that action often, as if her wound was a lamp and a genie might appear to tell her the answers she sought.

“There were two men in the car.” He treaded this road carefully. He didn’t know her relationship to his brother. “Do you remember them?”

She shook her head, frowning into her tea. “I remember snow. Shoveling snow. I remember a squirrel at our bird feeder. I chased him away. We feed the cardinals and blue jays that stay in the winter…”

“Who is ‘we’?” he prompted gently. This was promising-more than she’d ever shared.

Again, she sighed, looking over at him with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.” He stood and took her tray. She’d graduated from soup to sandwiches and he was pleased to see she’d eaten almost all of it.

“The men…they were dead?” she asked again.

He nodded, waiting. She seemed to be considering this information as if for the first time, although they’d gone over it a dozen times at least.

“Will you call the police?” She put her tea on the night table, pulling the covers up high.

“Take me to a hospital?”

“When the snow stops,” he agreed. He turned to take the tray out and her voice halted him.

“Why won’t you take off the mask?”

Her words made him cringe. She’d asked him this question before and he’d given his answer, trying to assuage her fears, but he found it hard to address the issue repeatedly. It was like piercing an old wound with an ice pick every few hours.

“It’s for your own good.” He hesitated, hand on the doorknob, balancing the tray. When he glanced back at her, he saw the hurt in her eyes and wished things could be different. “Trust me, you don’t want me to take it off.”