Behind the closed door, Lady Mae brought her hand to her heart, feeling it beat against her breast. Then she pressed her ear against the door and closed her eyes. She heard Ruby’s boots pacing the porch and felt the soft vibration of her steps as she walked the wooden boards. Lady Mae half expected the woman to start yelling or banging on the door again, but through the thick oak she heard a song so familiar it made her stomach plummet to the earth. Lady Mae did not move or breathe. She listened to Ruby and to her voice, which held in it not sorrow nor guilt, but a grace and ease that belied the woman’s sentence. It was the same song—and of this Lady Mae was sure—that her mother had hummed the day she had crouched underneath the open window of the depot and listened to her mother take from a man what was hers to take by law. Lady Mae pulled away from the door quickly, stumbling backward until her hands hit the table behind her. Ruby’s file fell to the ground, and as Lady Mae bent to pick it up she saw written in the calligraphy of the Deputies the assignment of three atonements. It wasn’t a lot, but most residents ended up with only one or two at a time. What could that old woman have done to cost her three pieces of herself?

On the back wall next to the table was a black telephone. Lady Mae had never used it before, though she could easily recall being instructed in how to do so. Pick up the receiver, put a finger in the number nine—the only number on the telephone—and wait for someone to answer on the other end. She had been told it was for emergencies—blood that wouldn’t slow, an uncooperative patient, an attack—and while Ruby’s presence outside the door did not necessarily constitute an emergency, the small prick of fear in Lady Mae’s chest thumped loudly; it was something she’d listened to since her mother’s death. Perhaps had she heeded the warning drum that beat from within, the one that had been there all along, her mother would at that moment be sitting on a chair in the shack waiting for her daughter to arrive home.

Should’ve done something, Mama.

Ain’t nothing in the world you could have done, my girl.

She brought her hand up and brushed the metal earpiece with her fingertips. It was smooth and cool against her warm skin. As she lifted it out of its cradle, the book from Arbuckle she had read the day before suddenly came to mind. The sentence; the punishment begins at the sentence. It was the message Arbuckle had wanted her to receive. She was sure of it. She let her hand drop to her side, pressing the receiver into the folds of her skirt and thought of the patient, of that woman standing outside waiting for an atonement.

With the receiver in one hand, she turned to the inquest page in Ruby’s file and skimmed down to the date of her sentencing: one year ago to the day. Why had she waited so long? If what the book said was true—that the dread and panic was there from the outset—wouldn’t residents want to come and get it over with? For over three hundred days and nights Ruby must have thought about it—what it would be like to walk up to the depot whole and leave with something gone. Had she cried? Had she begged the victim or their family to spare her just this once? Or was she resolute, finding inside of her a strength she never knew she had? She straightened up, and when she hooked her finger in the number nine, she saw the crescent moons her fingernails had carved into her palm.