“Sure she’s worried is all.”

“Not sure. Seems more than that.”

“She just asked I watch out for you is all. I promise I’d tell you if there were more, but there ain’t. Now come on, I got another one for you.”

She thought that he had more arithmetic for her and reached for one of the books on the table. But he put his hand out to stop her, producing instead another book from his jacket pocket. It was small and dark, no bigger than his hand and no thicker than a clothespin.

“What you got there?” Lady Mae asked.

“Something I think you’ll like.”

She held out her hand, and he gave it to her. The words that had once been on the cover were worn away and the binding stiches were loose; small threads hung out of the top and bottom of the book. It felt smooth and soft, as though held by many. She opened it, and the binding cracked and snapped, the smell of the yellowed pages homelike and warm. Her eyes saw the title then, and she closed the book quickly and looked up at Arbuckle.

“Now I know you’ve been talking to my ma more than you’re letting on, Arbuckle. Come out with it now.”

He exhaled slowly and looked over sheepishly at Lady Mae. “Listen—your ma, she knows a thing or two. And if she says we all ought to work on forgiveness then forgive is what we should try to do.”

“But she’s the one that wanted me to take them kids to court.”

“Don’t reckon that’s what she’s saying exactly.”

“Well what else you think she’s saying?”

“That maybe we got it all wrong.”

“I don’t think you ought to be saying such things,” she said, and turned to look out of the window. She pulled the curtains tight. “I know where you’re going with this.”

“Maybe she’s right—maybe we’re both right. Maybe we can do things differently. Think: if there weren’t no butchers, them kids wouldn’t be reared to hate you.”

It was the first time that Arbuckle had acknowledged what Lady Mae knew to be true; she was hated and hated by many. It was a hatred born the day she was, inescapable and profound. No matter how kind she had been to others, how submissive or defiant, it was always the same. She had only Arbuckle and her mother, an existence lonelier than she’d let herself grasp.

“I didn’t mean—I don’t mean to upset you, it’s only—”

“I ain’t upset—just that—”

But the words failed Lady Mae just as they had earlier; she knew then in that moment the feeling that had been with her all day long. At first, when she breakfasted in broken silence with her mother, she had thought it alarm, hot and unyielding. Her mother had weighed her words, intent on keeping something from Lady Mae. And though Lady Mae told herself that had there been anything terribly wrong her mother would’ve said so, there had been her mother’s tight grasp, the concern behind her smile. Lady Mae was right to feel alarm, to feel the bubbling of worry. That wasn’t all, though. Something else was there just beneath the surface and neither her mother nor Arbuckle were telling her straight. So in that moment as she sat there next to Arbuckle, the only friend she had in the world, it came upon her like a flood, the waters of which would drown her for what she felt all day, the tangled mass that sat inside of her, had been loss, a choking, unfathomable loss that had slowly taken her breath away.