We worked all night. While they were in the farmhouse, I dug out three more canisters of money. The earth was so frozen it felt as if I was chipping at bone. Once I broke through the crust of cold ground, I had to perch on my knees and use the shovel like a pick ax. I saw the tops of the canisters, then wrenched them out with my hands. Cold radiated through my gloves. I was exhuming a grave, I thought. Snow quickly filled the holes I had made, as if even this small blackness was not allowed to stay in the new white world.

Likely, there were even more canisters—Lobo didn’t believe in putting money in banks, and I knew Mama would have left as much as she could for me—but I was worried about time. Would the men who killed the Pumpkin King come at dawn? Would they come tomorrow? Would they come at all?

Other men would.

I needed to get to my mama. Her postcard ran through my mind. I had memorized it, it was so short. So much meaning held in the smallest of words. It’s warm here but hard. He’s gotten worse. I wish you had come with us. I love you and I’m sorry.

Those last two phrases twined together like people said poison ivy and jewelweed did: the toxin and its cure. That was a myth, though. Jewelweed couldn’t root in dry places as poison ivy could, not for long. But with my mama, it was true. She loved and apologized, loved and apologized: the heart and the hurting. They were linked in her. Lobo had a dual nature, too: helping and hurting. He had wailed on me; he had taught me to survive a fight. To survive him.

I love you and I’m sorry.

Dawn came. The truck was packed and ready. Grayson and Dance stood at the edge of the yard, waiting around, not wanting to bother me or ask what I was doing. I wouldn’t have told them, anyway. I had shoved the money canisters I had unearthed into a backpack. Then it was time to go back for the gun.

Midway down the wild backyard, under sedge, dead or dying, I tore through the little patch of jewelweed. The roots crumbled, brittle as wind chimes. Lobo had not replaced the earth well or smoothly when he had buried the gun. It was obvious where it was. He had not cared. He had wanted to be right about the gun, about needing it soon.

I yanked the handle up, knocking off clumps of dirt.

“What is that?” Grayson said.

“Get in the truck,” I said. “We’re going.”