“But what’s gonna happen to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What you did to Edith. You ain’t allowed to do that.”

“No, I ain’t. But that ain’t no concern for you. I’ll be fine.”

“How’s that?”

Her mother took in a deep breath and smiled at her daughter. There was something she wasn’t saying, and it was the same thing that had been there the morning of the day before. Lady Mae read it in her eyes that did not crease at the corners, but instead studied her daughter’s face. She reached her hand out across the table, wiggling her fingers at Lady Mae. But she did not take her mother’s hand.

“I’ll go talk to Daniels tomorrow,” her mother said. “Course I’m going to protect you—you think the Deputies wouldn’t do the same for their own kin? If there were any here? Besides, since Edith’s accused, she ain’t got no right to press charges. Just made it worse for herself is all.”

“What’ll happen to her?” Lady Mae’s voice was small.

“Come Saturday she’ll be up on the scaffold.”

“But she ain’t nothing but a child. Only a couple years younger than me.”

“Makes no difference to the Deputies.”

“What’ll they do to her?”

Her mother did not answer, her eyes upon her fork that poked at the potatoes on her plate. Lady Mae did not ask again.

4

When Lady Mae came into the kitchen the next morning, her mother was at the stove frying beans and eggs; they would not have meat until the next allocation day and even then, they would receive little. Though there were many animals dead from the drought, their muscles stiff from the final throes of starvation, in the heat the meat turned rancid within hours and was not fit for butchering. The animals couldn’t be burned either—not without risking the entire settlement—and so the bodies and offal, dumped behind the depot and left to rot, piled up. It mattered not to her mother, who was long immune to the bodies, the flies that swarmed in the sticky air, the sour stench of rotting flesh, but even in her sleep on the other side of the settlement, Lady Mae gagged when the winds blew right.

“Good morning,” her mother said.

She lingered in the space between the doorway and her mother. She had heard her mother in the night; the cries started low and sounded as if one of the neighboring animals was birthing a calf, bellows escaping its throat and mouth, choking and sudden. With each mournful swell, Lady Mae rose in her bed and tossed her legs over the side. But just when she had resolved to check on her mother, the cries would stop, and Lady Mae would lie back down on the bed, listening in the silence for them to start again.

“Don’t forget to do the coop first,” her mother said. “One of them ain’t been laying right—best we sort that and make sure ain’t nothing wrong with the others. Found one without a yolk this morning.”