She felt around for a lamp; next to it were the matches. Taking one, she struck it on the wall and held it to the wick, let it burn down near her fingertips. The room brightened, and as the shadows flickered against the walls, the light fell onto the floor, onto books thrown open by searching hands. Volumes littered the planks, leaned onto each other as if someone had come along and stood them upright with unsteady hands. She looked more closely; the cot was torn apart, a shelf hung half off a wall. As her eyes adjusted, she saw also a broom, one shoe, the glass of a lamp. The Deputies had destroyed what was left of Arbuckle. Of course they had. While she slept in the sumac, while she’d been staggering through the forest. Maybe that day was not the first time the Deputies had been in his shack. Maybe the moment Arbuckle had stepped out to return to Lady Mae, they’d descended on it like vultures, tearing at it as they had her mother, trying to dig out the thing they wanted. Had they wanted his life, too, or only to make Lady Mae suffer as she took twenty of his parts? Either way, they would have known that one begot the other.

She lifted the lamp and gingerly stepped deeper into the shack. The first thing she did was walk over to the cupboards to search for food. She found oats, old bread, a jar of berries. She opened the jar, took a piece of the bread, and ate quickly, hungrily, the sweetness of the berries overwhelming and the crust of the bread cutting through her gums. The pain distracted her, and she was glad for it. She wanted to hurt as Arbuckle had. If she did, she could keep him close, the weight in her heart her anchor. She’d stay tethered, even if she could not stay in his shack among his things.

Lady Mae took up the lamp and turned around to more closely examine the one-room shack. She walked over to where the books lay on the floor and picked each one up. She flipped through the pages, turned them on their sides, and shook them as if a secret message were there. But nothing floated to the floor, and though she scrutinized the title of each, she could not figure if there was something there. If she had more time, maybe—but every item she touched delivered to her a sickening pain. She faltered, stumbled across the wooden planks wanting only to be near Arbuckle again, to drink in the smell of him. There, up against the back wall, was the broken cot, the mattress on the floor. Lady Mae went to it and eased herself down. Her bones cracked as she did, her feet thankful for the absence of weight. She was tired. She hurt. She lay back on the mattress. So grief had her again, all the way up the mountain in a shack built by Arbuckle’s hands, her body upon his bed.