She had clothes, but they were wet still. She pulled them out of the bag one by one until she lifted the last piece and placed it on the ground next to her. She took out the canned foods, no more than two, maybe three days’ worth of rations. She’d have to be resourceful, careful, and eat only if needed.

Ain’t got no right trying to save me, Arbuckle.

Only thing I knew to do, my love.

The clearing was southeast from where she was. But as it stood, she couldn’t see the sun. She’d have to keep going until the canopy broke, though she hadn’t had any food for over a day, and she was weak. At the bottom of her satchel was her kit. The knives would help her cut open an animal should she trap one; without them, she would not survive. But that was not all that it was. It was the only thing of her mother’s she had. She had meant to take something more, but there was the rain and then his boots and marrow and silent heartbeat and—

She opened her kit and remembered: the cleaver next to Arbuckle’s body, the knife in the Deputy’s head. The only tools remaining in her kit was a small scalpel and the cutting scissors. She stabbed the tip of the scissors into a can of tomatoes over and over until she had made a hole big enough for the fruit to get through. She pried the metal back with her thumb. Then she tilted the can up to her mouth and drank the contents down, barely even stopping to chew when her teeth and tongue met the fleshy pulp. When she had emptied the can, she wiped her hand across her mouth and then her stomach, but in the morning light she could not tell where the juice ended and the Deputy’s old blood began.

Her feet throbbed, and she was stiff from tip to tail. As she sat in the damp leaves, she levied it: she could turn back, meet those who had hated her one last time. She could wait until dark and then find her way back down the hills to the edge of the settlement in hopes of getting her hands on supplies—a trap, maybe, the cleaver and heading knife. Her great-grandmother’s quilt. Or she could keep going up in hopes that Arbuckle’s shack was out there still—that the Deputies hadn’t yet burned it like they had his father’s. Arbuckle had been there not even one week before. Perhaps he had left something that could help her—food, an oil lamp. But even if he hadn’t, she’d take what was left. The shadow of his memory, his scent clinging to the walls. The soft silence of his ghost.

Just then, a grosbeak called, and a flock took flight. There was the rush of wings and a cry high and long. Lady Mae jumped to her feet. She spun around and searched in between the birch limbs, but there was no one there. Not yet. The residents were likely setting out again in hopes of finding her exhausted body face down in the earth. There was nowhere to hide, and so she threw her belongings back into her satchel and began to walk.