I sighed. My throat was tight. I spoke softly. “I don’t know what became of Fala, Amzil. I hope that she somehow got away from Gettys and is having a nice life somewhere. I didn’t kill her. I never saw her again after that one night. And I didn’t force her to keep to her room with me. As far-fetched as it sounds, she wanted to be there.” Even as I said the words, I realized how unlikely they would sound to anyone else in the world.

“I didn’t think you had, Nevare. I thought of all the nights we were alone in my house. If you were the kind of man who would force a woman, or kill her if she refused, well—” She paused, then pointed out, “If I’d believed what they said, would I have come all this way out here, alone, not telling anyone where I was going and leaving my kids with strangers who’d toss them out on the streets if I never came back? I didn’t believe it of you.”

“Thank you,” I replied gravely. I felt truly grateful. I thought about that. I was grateful because a woman didn’t think I was a murderer. When I’d been tall and handsome and golden, everyone had thought well of me.

Carsina had told me how brave I’d looked. Encase the same man in this slab of flesh and these worn clothes and women saw a rapist and murderer. I lifted my hands to my face and rubbed my temples.

“So. Nevare. What do you think?”

I dropped my hands and stared at her. “What?”

“I know it’s not much time to think about it, but I have to have an answer.

Last night they let me stay for free. They say that my little ones can sleep in one of the empty rooms at night while I’m working. But that won’t change that they’ll be growing up as the children of a whore. And I know what will happen to my girls if they do. Don’t know what would become of Sem. Truth to tell, I don’t even want to wonder what happens to a boy growing up in a whorehouse. I got to get them out of there today, or I got to go to work there tonight. And I know that you know in the past, I’ve done whatever I had to do to get by, but Nevare, I never thought of myself as a whore. Just as a mother doing what she had to do, once in a while, to get stuff for her children. But if I start working there, night after night, well, I will be a whore. And no denying it.” “Why did you leave your cabin finally? What drove you out?”

She met my gaze squarely. “You remember that fellow up the hill? He tried to break in. I had my gun and I warned him, four, five times I shouted at him to get away from the door or I’d shoot. He shouted back that he’d never seen me fire that thing and he didn’t think I knew how or that I had any bullets. And the way he was yelling, I knew that he wasn’t just going to break in and take what he wanted. He was going to get rid of us, to be sure he could have all we had. So I shooed my kids behind me, and when he finally got the door chopped in, well, I fired. And I killed him. And then I packed up my children and what we could carry and we ran away from there.” By the time she finished speaking, she was hunched over in her chair as if she expected me to strike her, wringing her hands together. She looked up at me from her cower. “So now you know,” she said very softly.