“Not all regret it, Lady Mae. And those,” she said, pausing, “are the ones the Deputies want punished. Everyone else—well, they know how it is from the moment they can walk and talk. Just the way it is.”

“I know. It’s just that—”

“Just what?”

Lady Mae faltered, trying to figure out how to piece the words together that were there in the sides of her mouth. She’d heard what Arbuckle had been saying all these years, knew its weight. He was onto something—she felt it deep in her bones—but to say it, even to her mother, would be blasphemous. Still, she could not help herself; it came bubbling up and out there in the dim light of the room.

“What if he’s right?” Lady Mae asked. “What if everybody’s missing something? You taught me what’s right and wrong, but do you reckon everyone knows it as well?”

“No, Lady Mae. Lots don’t know right from wrong, and even those that do can easily lose their way.”

“But you haven’t. I haven’t. Arbuckle hasn’t.”

Her mother rose from her chair and placed her book on a side table. She went over to Lady Mae and gently lifted her grandmother’s quilt—Lady Mae’s great-grandmother’s—from the back of the sofa and began to fold it. It was old and worn, the edges frayed. The soft patchwork had been repaired over and over again by each woman in the family; her own mother had recently redone the border using the faded fabric of a dress Lady Mae had outgrown.

Her mother knelt then, taking her daughter’s hands into both of her own. “We’re different, the three of us,” she said to her worried daughter.

“How?” asked Lady Mae.

“We’ve all been victims, pure and simple. For you and me our lineage is to blame, for Arbuckle it’s his pa. We know what hurts. You felt it yesterday with those children no doubt. And I’d bet that you might’ve felt something else, too—anger, maybe. Rage.”

“I did.”

“You can’t let that take over—that’s what gets residents in the chair. You got to try to turn it into something else. Pity, maybe. Some kind of understanding.”

“You sound like Arbuckle.”

“I ain’t never said he was wrong.”

“But I don’t know if I can, Mama. I wanted to hurt them kids.” Lady Mae pulled her hands out from her mother’s and grabbed the edge of the quilt, balling the beautiful squares up into her fists.

“I know you did.”

“And that weren’t the first time I felt it.”

“I know it, Lady Mae. I’ve felt it, too,” her mother said softly.

“What’d you do about it?”

“There weren’t nothing to do. I kept it in here.” She brought her hand to her chest. “Anything else would’ve spelled trouble. Listen to me carefully, Lady Mae. You’re going to feel what you feel—ain’t no stopping that. But what you do with it is something else.”

“How you mean?”

“Them kids behaving the way they do—it ain’t their fault. Not really.”