Winter's Bone

Ree continues her walk home in the morning. Ice begins to melt in the warmer weather. Ree begins to cry when, crossing a bridge, she realizes that she was staring at the fractured ice of the river below in search of a body. 

Ree wakes up at home that evening. She throws out the failed “basketti” concoction the boys had tried to make for dinner the night before and begins to cook. Blond Milton arrives and interrupts her preparations with a warning that people are saying Ree is asking too many questions. He brings Ree outsides, throws her to the ground roughly, and tells her to get in his truck. Sonny and Harold follow them outside, and Sonny defends his sister. While Blond Milton expresses pride at his son’s courage, he slaps him across the face as punishment for his foolishness in speaking back to his elder.

After a brief argument, in which Ree tells Blond Milton to fight men, not boys, he places her in the truck and drives her out of town to a house that had burned down. At first, Ree thinks that he’s there to take advantage of her, but he dismisses her worries and draws her attention back to the house: which, he claims, is the last place anyone had seen Jessup.