“I ain’t going to be able to do it,” Lady Mae said and stepped back, breaking their embrace.

“You’ll have to,” he said.

“Ain’t no way I can hurt you.”

“I ain’t looking at it like that. And I reckon I’d gladly give up a hand to be with you.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re going to have to.”

Lady Mae wrapped her fingers around one of his. It was warm and slender and rough to the touch. She bent his fingers down into his palm and held his hand in hers. If it meant they could get away—but as she was about to say don’t know and might be and hard to say, another thought crossed her mind. It was quick and picture-like: she and Arbuckle standing over the lifeless bodies of the Deputies that stood outside of her shack. In the corner were the fire irons—it’d only take one blow to the head to knock them out, one pierce through the flesh to stop their hearts.

“I want to kill them,” she whispered. It came out suddenly and with force, and Arbuckle lowered their still-joined hands and pulled her in close again.

“We ain’t killing nobody. Don’t got need to. Tomorrow you’ll take my hand, and then when night falls we’ll go.”

“But my mama—”

“I know,” he said. “And my pa—wasn’t going to tell you but when I left here yesterday I found him—the one out there standing watch in front. Deputy Iverson. I asked him how it happened. How my pa died. I mean, I know it was a fire and all, but how’d it start? I asked him if they’d ever investigated.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said my pa had started the fire himself on the stove, and when the walls caught he must’ve been too drunk to wake. But the thing is, Lady Mae, that he ain’t never use that stove. The pipe was clogged and it ain’t never get enough air to stay lit. Ain’t no way a fire would live in it.”

“Maybe he cleaned it out,” Lady Mae suggested.

“Not likely. Hadn’t been used in years.”

“Did you tell anyone that?” she asked.

“No.”

“But if that’s true, then that means—”

“Means what we’ve always known.”

“Your pa.”

“Your mama.”

“But why would they want him dead?”

Arbuckle shrugged. “Same as anybody would’ve wanted him dead,” he said. “He was a terrible man—all them residents maimed under his eye. All the times them Deputies had to set out after him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Ain’t nothing to do.”

“But he’s there,” she said. “Right outside that door. We could do it—we could get up into the hills and—”

“And what?” he asked.

“But what he’s done to us. To you and me both.”

“It is our lot,” he said. “But we’ll get away, and both them Deputies will have to live with that fact—might even be persecuted for it, them standing watch and all.”

The room darkened suddenly, and they both turned to look out of the window. The sky, which had been clear and bright for so long, held gray toward the west. In the distance, they saw a cyclone of dust rise and fall from the ground. The wind had changed and with it would come the rains. If they could get away before the first drop fell, then it could be. Might be.