“An’ she finally said aye,” Anna whispered. This—was all too much to take in at once. She knew, of course, that her father didn’t have much use for her, except that she was his, and therefore no one else’s to take. But she had thought her mother cared for her. At least a little bit. But now to discover she hadn’t been wanted at all . . . it was a terrible blow.

“Why’s my Pa so mad at y’all, Aunt Jinny?” she asked, finally, as her aunt picked her mug back up and finished her now-cold tea.

Her aunt chuckled. “’Cause when ’e come rooster-struttin’ around Maybelle, I tol’ ’im to ’is face what I thunk of him. Pride goeth afore a fall, Lew Jones, I tol’ him. Y’all think yore better’n a farmer, cause y’all kin run a steam drill. Thet there steam drill’s a-gonna be the death of y’all. An’ y’all’re gonna leave a widder what owes ev’thin’ she’s got, which ain’t a-gonna be much, t’ the Company store. I tol’ ’im that straight. An’ thet’s what’s a-gonna happen.”

In that moment, Anna might have hated her aunt—except that Jinny didn’t sound triumphant. She sounded weary, resigned, even sad. Like one of the prophets in the Bible who tried to tell people that something terrible was going to happen, and they ignored him, and it happened, and people suffered because they wouldn’t listen to him. And he didn’t exult in their suffering, he grieved because he couldn’t convince them and save them.

“I might’a been a bit hard on ’im,” Jinny added after a very long silence. “The Good Lord knows he’s a-payin’ th’ price fer bein’ a damn-fool now. Them mines eat men an’ spit ’em out t’die afore their time.”

Anna bit her lip. She wanted to ask, “Is my Pa really going to die?” But she knew the answer. Her aunt was right. Everyone knew that when a miner started to get that kind of cough, he was going to die. The owners claimed that breathing coal dust was good for you, that it protected you against things like wasting fever and winter fever, but Anna didn’t believe them, and it was clear her aunt didn’t either.

“Won’t yore potions do him no good?” she asked timidly.

“They’ll do some,” Jinny admitted. “Dunno how much. Yore Ma thinks I kin work some kinda miracle. Ain’t nobody does miracles but God Almighty.” She reached out awkwardly and patted Anna’s hand. “I knowed that were hard t’hear. But I allus think it’s better t’know th’ truth. In the long run, lies’ll hurt y’all more than truth. Now y’all prolly oughta go up t’bed.”

Obediently, Anna undressed at the foot of the ladder to her loft, left her skirt, petticoat, and shirt folded over the side, and put the drawers and chemise in a basket by the sink to be washed tomorrow. As she climbed the ladder to the loft, in a moment of distraction from her woes, she realized that today, on the line beside her own clothing, there’d been a peculiar garment that was a sort of chemise and drawers in one. So that must be what Aunt Jinny wore under her flannel shirt and dungarees.