He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to let you go, for fuck’s sake, Gilly, that’s getting pretty old. But you want to run out in the snow again? Be a dumbass? Be my guest. See what happens this time, see if I save your sorry ass one more time.”

“What about when the snow melts, Todd? What then?”

His gaze wavered for a second before he shoved her away from him and stalked to the center of the room, head hung low. When he swung around to look at her, his dark eyes were large in his face, his mouth a pensive frown.

“Why can’t you just like me?” he asked her. “I ain’t done anything real bad to you, Gilly. Not real bad.”

“I won’t ever like you. Don’t you see I can’t?”

“Why not?” Todd held out his hands, giving her that kicked-dog look. “Why?”

“Because you’re my enemy.” Gilly pulled the torn pieces of her gown back together with one hand, the fabric a useless shield but one she couldn’t put down. Her mouth stung when she spoke, but the blood had ceased dripping. “Because you are keeping me from the things I love.”

He sighed like the weight of the world had come to rest on his broad shoulders. “We could get along better than we do.”

“No!” She recoiled, grimacing.

“I didn’t mean like that,” he said quietly.

“I know you didn’t. The answer’s still no.”

He looked angry again. “We’re stuck here, Gilly. Ain’t no way around it. We’re fucking stuck out here in the middle of noplace up to our assholes in snow. That’s the way it is. Don’t keep pushing me into being something you wish I was just so you can feel better about what you did.”

It wasn’t the statement of a stupid man but of an insightful one, and Gilly wondered at what the people in his life had done to him, and for how long, to convince him he was so dumb.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Todd said. “I don’t want to.”

But he would. The words unsaid nevertheless hung between them, loud and clear.

She turned her face away. “When the snow melts, I’m going to try to get away. Are you going to tie me up?”

“I’m not that kinky,” Todd said, “though a girl did ask me once to put on her panties.”

This was serious and she hated he was making a joke of it. “The only thing keeping me here is the snow. You know that.”

“Ah, fuck me. Yes. I know it.” Todd scowled.

“So, what happens when the snow melts?” She asked the question more quietly this time, not pushing so hard. Truly curious. She wanted to know the answer.

“I knew an old hound dog once,” Todd said after a pause. “He wasn’t mine – I never had a dog. He belonged to this guy who lived down the street from one of the places they put me after…one of the places I lived as a kid.”

Despite herself, Gilly lifted her face to meet his unwavering gaze. Todd’s voice was solid, deep, precise even in its uneducated manner. He stood with his feet planted slightly apart, hands at his sides. Telling her.

“This dog was one mean son-of-a-bitch. The guy kept him outside on a chain, and that dog would run so fast to bite your ass he’d choke himself right off his own feet. Every day, I’d walk by that dog on my way to school, every fucking day he’d try to get me. But he never did.”

Todd laughed, low. “The guy that owned him could’ve just kicked that dog when he saw him, but he never did. That guy always made sure that dog had plenty of food and water, and he gave him chew toys and rawhide bones. And every night, when that guy came out to feed the dog, he’d pat him on the head and scratch him behind the ears. And the dog, that ass-biting dog, always growled. The guy loved that dog, even though the dog never loved him back, and never thanked him for all the nice things he did for it. Then one night, when the guy went out to feed the dog and pat him on the head, the little fucker didn’t bother growling. This time, he took a big chunk right out of the guy’s hand.”

Her throat had gone dry during the telling of his tale. “What happened then?”

Todd smiled, an empty expression that bared his teeth and did not reach his eyes. “The guy went inside his house and got his shotgun, and he blew that little fucker’s head right off.”

There was no mistaking the meaning of his story, but Gilly wasn’t afraid of it. “Which one of us is the dog?”

“I don’t know, Gilly,” Todd said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Roses don’t like to get their feet wet.” Gilly’s mother wore a broad-brimmed straw hat. She held up her trowel, her hands unprotected by gloves, her fingernails dark with dirt. Her knuckles, too, grimed deep with black earth. “Look, Gillian. Pay attention.”

Gilly would never be good at growing roses. She loved the way they looked and smelled, but roses took too much time and attention. Roses had rules. Her mother had time to spend on pruning, fertilizing. Tending. Nurturing. But Gilly didn’t. Gilly never had enough time.

She was dreaming. She knew it by the way her mother smiled and stroked the velvety petals of the red rose in her hand. Her mother hadn’t smiled like that in a long time, and if she had maybe it was only ever in Gilly’s dreams. The roses all around them were real enough, or at least the memory of them was. They’d grown in wild abundance against the side of her parents’ house and along gravel paths laid out in the back yard. Red, yellow, blushing pink, tinged with peach. The only ones she saw here, though, were the red ones. Roses with names like After Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They were all in bloom.

“Pay attention,” Gilly’s mother repeated and held out the rose. “Roses are precious and fragile things. They take a lot of work, but it’s all worth it.”

The only flowers that grew at Gilly’s house were daffodils and dandelions, perennials the deer and squirrels left alone. Her garden was empty. “I’ve tried, Mom. My roses die.”

Gilly’s mother closed her fist around the rose’s stem. Bright blood appeared. This rose had thorns.

“Because you neglected them, Gillian. Your roses died because you don’t pay attention.”

“Mom. Your hand.”

Her mother’s smile didn’t fade. Didn’t wilt. She moved forward to press the rose into Gilly’s hand. Gilly didn’t want to take it. Her mother was passing the responsibility to her, and she didn’t want it. She tried to keep her fingers closed, refusing the flower. Her mother gripped her wrist.

“Take it, Gillian.”

This was the woman Gilly remembered better. Wild eyes, mouth thin and grim. Hair lank and in her face, the hat gone in the way dreams had of changing. Her mother’s fingers bit into Gilly’s skin, sharp as thorns and bringing blood.

“You love them,” Gilly’s mother said. “Don’t you love them?”

“I do love them!” Gilly cried.

“You have to take care of what you love,” her mother said. “Even if it makes you bleed.”

Gilly woke, startled and disoriented. She didn’t how long she’d slept, how far they’d gone. Didn’t know where they were. She rolled her stiff neck on shoulders gone just as sore and stared out to dark roads and encroaching trees. Steep mountains hung with frozen mini-waterfalls rose on both sides. A train track ran parallel to the road, separated by a metal fence.

Had she seen these roads before? Gilly didn’t think so. Nothing looked familiar. The man took an unmarked exit. They rode for another hour on forested roads rough enough to make her glad for four-wheel drive, then turned down another narrow, rutted road. Ice gleamed in the ruts, and the light layer of snow that had been worn away on the main road still remained here. A rusted metal gate with a medieval-looking padlock blocked the way.

He pulled a jangling ring of keys from the pocket of his sweatshirt and held them out to her. “Unlock it.”