As she read, she was struck by an incomprehensible unease, a disquieting wave that curled under her. She searched for the origin of the discomfort, thought long about her mother and the kids that used to taunt her. Those residents that she first butchered herself. Nausea swelled up inside of her, but when she ran to the bucket that was reserved for smaller amputations, she could do nothing but spit and gag. As she crouched there at the base of the chair hanging onto the leather straps, her periphery went blurry and gray. She tried to rationalize it—the milk had gone bad, one of her patients had been contagious—but she knew it was the book, the sentence, the suffering, and such knowledge sickened her.

Once she was home and safe behind a bolted door, though, she told herself that the fear had been unfounded. And as she sat on the sofa in the dim light of the evening, she told herself that they had been thoughts and nothing more. But although she was able to keep her heart slow and her breathing soft, the gray appeared, the edges of which crackled and burned. It licked her bones, bubbled and blistered under her skin.

Ain’t as thick as you, Mama.

I gave you everything you need, my girl.

Lady Mae stood up from the sofa and pushed her thoughts of earlier aside as best she could for she had much to do; Arbuckle was arriving the next day and would be staying with her in her shack. In his last letter, he said that his inheritance was set to begin with the harvest and that if he didn’t come willingly the Deputies would surely find him and drag him back anyways. It wouldn’t be too bad, he’d said, saying that now that his father was gone nothing in Settlement Five could hurt him anymore. When Lady Mae read those words on the small piece of paper he’d procured from the back of a book, she felt a deep, inexplicable grief wash over her. She longed to be near him, to hear the voice she knew so well, to fold her hands over his and share in their anguish so long avoided.

He had written that he was taller, larger than he had been at nineteen and that the years since they’d seen each other had taken a toll on his body. Lady Mae doubted that such an interminable time could do much to Arbuckle, whose strong, calloused hands and broad shoulders were clear in her memory since she thought of him often and at length. Although he had said that he’d changed, Lady Mae knew she would recognize him instantly. She would see his eyes made darker by news of his father’s death, his gait hurried by an invisible ache. In his face, she would recognize the child she had grown up with, the boy that found her the morning after her mother lay dead in the living room.

Lady Mae walked over to the stove in the corner and knelt down. She opened the door and pushed the silky ash around with her fingers before scooping it into the pail with a small shovel. When the pail was full and heavy she carried it out the back door to the edge where the land met the start of the rocky hills. There in the empty space beyond was the burn pile, heaving from the drought, and she tilted the pail down, dumping the ashes near the bottom. There was no breeze, and they landed noiselessly in the thick, electric air. She went back into the house, the handle squeaking as the pail swung. And as she closed the door behind her, pulling it shut and bolting it, she wondered if she’d feel safer with Arbuckle under her roof.