“I v-vowed—” Her teeth chattered until she couldn’t speak. She’d kept fear inside for years and years, and now she’d said the truth aloud. Now she might hang. She deserved to. “I vowed to never speak those words. I’ve prayed for God to forgive me for what I’ve done and protect me from the punishment I deserve. But it’s like holding in terror that builds until it has the pressure of a steaming kettle. Now that I said it, I can feel that it’s been grinding inside me from the moment that gun blasted and my pa clutched his chest, dropped to his knees, and pitched forward next to my ma’s body.”

She stopped speaking again and covered her face more tightly with her trembling hands. It was still as vivid as the moment it happened. She could remember the roar of the gun. The way Pa staggered back, looking at her with stunned eyes. She could smell the blood, smell the sulfur, the stench of the smoking gun.

“You killed your father?” Wyatt’s voice sounded as if he were far away.

His question helped her go on. “Yes, I shot him dead. I came in to find Ma on the kitchen floor, bleeding, unconscious. Pa turned on me. And it wasn’t the first time he’d done it. But he never hurt me like he hurt Ma. This time though, there was such fire in his eyes. Such a love of hurting Ma, and now those eyes were on me. He swung a fist, and I lurched back. Hit the wall. There was a gun belt hanging from a nail behind the door. I was so afraid and so angry. He’d hurt Ma so many times.”

“That’s where you learned healing, doctoring your ma?”

She nodded. Glad Wyatt had interrupted her story and taken her out of that room full of death. “After years of cruel beatings, he’d finally gone too far. But I didn’t know that yet. I’d seen Ma on the floor, not moving, plenty of times before. I fumbled that gun out of the holster and aimed it. He laughed, taunted me. ‘You gonna shoot your lovin’ papa, little girl?’”

She thought of those words, that ugliness. “I—I pulled the trigger. If—if I’d done it because I was afraid, only afraid, I would believe it was self-defense. But I hated him. I’d hated him for so long. I know in my heart how badly I wanted to kill him.” She started shaking again. She felt like there were tears inside her, but they’d turned to stone in her chest, and she couldn’t make them fall. She had to bear the hard pain of them forever.