“Like Willard’s stack—always peeking out. Aren’t you scared when you walk by?”

“No. It ain’t nothing to me,” he said and shook his head. “No such thing as ghosts.”

“Says you.”

Her eyes dropped back down to the abacus for a moment. What if I can’t, Mama.

“Arbuckle, can I ask you something?”

“You know you can.” He put the primer down and rested his elbows on the table, his hands clasped lightly together. Lady Mae felt young and foolish, the lump in her throat belying her demeanor.

“Your pa ever say anything to you after he sees her?”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know. Just anything, I guess. How she acts or what she says, maybe, if she says anything at all.” She twisted her fingers around one another as she spoke, tugging and pulling on her skin as if the answer she sought was just underneath.

Arbuckle leaned his head back and looked at the beamed ceiling, blackened from years of chimney smoke. “Well, I don’t know. Not that I can think directly.” He kept his dark eyes focused on the ceiling, and Lady Mae knew he was lying. Of course his father said things—they all said things. And of course he’d never tell her, never hurt or upset her knowingly. He’d grown up protecting her, putting both his mouth and body in between her and the rotten children that circled her.

“Will you tell me if he does?” she asked, hoping he’d never have anything to tell her.

“I sure will.”

She sat there and stared at the abacus on the table while Arbuckle flipped through the pages of the primer trying to find a problem that would stand up to Lady Mae’s mind. It was hot, and though the windows were open as far as they’d go, sweat dripped from both of them.

“I’ll get us something to drink.” She jumped up and went to the icebox, which was cool but not cold as they’d not had ice since the drought started, but at least the sweet tea would feel good on the throat. She poured out two glassfuls and set them on the table.

Arbuckle lifted the glass and brought it to his lips, sipping gingerly and with relief. “You and your ma sure do—”

“She was acting funny this morning.” Lady Mae picked up her tea and pressed her hot palms against the sides of the glass.

“What you mean?”

“Don’t know exactly. Quiet, I guess.”

But what she wanted to tell him was that morning, as she had been helping her mother hook her corset to the hidden band of buttons on her skirt, she noticed something fall out of her mother’s skirt and onto the floor. Lady Mae bent to pick the thing up off the floor—from where she stood it looked like a thimble—but when she put it between her fingers it was smooth and hard. Since it was dim in her mother’s room with the curtains drawn closed, she brought it close to her face. At first, she thought it was a dried piece of cheese from one of the traps, but as her eyes adjusted, she realized that she was holding a tip of a finger, its nail still on.