Vengeance pushed at her. She heard her mother’s whispers to forgive, but how could she? She could not forgive the Deputy any more than she could harm Arbuckle; but to act on it—to kill him with all her might—would only endanger her and Arbuckle. And so in that moment under the scorching sun, she decided to hate quietly and without abash; she would save her violent fantasies for the pitch black of night, and there it would play out. Her hand around his throat. A needle through his heart. His face in the dust. What she had loved had been taken from her, and no matter her mother’s words, the dark odium remained just beneath her, lapping at the tips of her toes.

Deputy Iverson spat on the ground by Lady Mae’s feet. “Go on now,” he said. “Sure there’s someplace you ought to be.”

Arbuckle stepped forward and took Lady Mae’s elbow, but she did not feel it. Instead, there was only the hot breath of Deputy Iverson upon her neck. He followed behind the two of them, close but not too close, and as they walked in the direction of her shack, Deputy Iverson whistled low and long. Deputy Worth said nothing, but swung his watch at his side. He was bespeckled and thin, the quietest of the bunch, but he’d splay a man on the scaffold quicker than the rest and for that he was notorious.

Arbuckle wiggled his finger into the crook of Lady Mae’s arm and pressed down through her sleeves. He was trying to tell her that it was all right—but there was little comfort in it. Unless Arbuckle had a plan, getting away would be nearly impossible, what with the Deputies standing watch. And it was her fault. She had lied, and though it had been a calculated one, it didn’t matter. Twenty atonements. Both of his hands. Even if they stayed, even if she cut into him twenty times and left him limbless, would the Deputies be satisfied? Surely they’d find some way to get Arbuckle up onto the scaffold. Blasphemy. No one was left alive.

When they arrived at her shack, all four were wet with sweat. It slipped down their foreheads and their cheeks, sat trembling on the edge of their upper lips. Lady Mae did not dare raise an arm to wipe it away. She held on to Arbuckle, each step desperate and full of dread. It was a dread that had lain dormant since her mother died, the same one she had felt during that day so long ago when she mistook her mother’s hesitation for—for what? She had been too young to know what questions to ask and would have been ill-equipped to handle any true answers her mother could have given. The only thing she had known was the suffocating alarm that tried to swallow her as she watched her mother run and stumble in the dusty road.

The Deputies stopped just short of the porch and watched them with silent eyes as Lady Mae and Arbuckle walked across the old drooping wood.