“Where are you?”

The words left her mouth before she had time to think, and in an effort to distance herself from them, she stepped quickly away from the wall.

“Lady Mae, I believe you more than anybody ought to know about asking questions.”

The hairs stood on the back of her neck at the mention of her name, spoken slowly and deliberately, the Deputy’s voice stringing out each syllable in a growl. She tried to push down the salty panic, but her breath caught, the alarm thick on her tongue.

“What do you mean?”

Perhaps she had spoken defensively, the initial reaction to preserve her mother’s reputation both immediate and innate. She wanted to say was you in my house. Her lips moved and her eyes widened. Over the years, she’d examined the faces of each Deputy that came and went, hoping to see four jagged lines upon his left cheek. Then she’d know if he had been in her home under her roof or if he had watched them bash her mother’s head in or if he had done it himself. To her it mattered not; they were all guilty, no one any more than any other, each beholden to the crime. There was a lurching in her chest as though her insides were metal drawn out by nickel, and though her mouth remained closed, her teeth found the inside of her lower lip. She chewed softly at first, feeling the slick bumps and frenum with her tongue.

The Deputy—Deputy Iverson—sucked his teeth again, let out a long exhale that rushed into her ears. The crackling papers in the background fell silent. “Lady Mae,” he said. “You know the law.”

When she heard her name again, she bit down. As she pierced the flesh she held between her teeth, she tasted the blood, felt the iron pool in the pocket of her cheek. The Deputy sounded far away suddenly, like he was down a deep tunnel that lay beneath the earth. He had said her name too many times. And she’d had enough.

What if I could, Mama?

What good are you dead, my girl?

“You there, Lady Mae?”

She closed her eyes and tried to sear the sound of his dripping voice in her mind so that one day when she was heading into town or in the square, she might recognize it. She’d take something from her kit—something small that she could fit in her hand—and approach him from behind, working quickly and without thought as she had been trained to do. She’d put a needle through his heart—undetectable and instantaneous—and she’d watch him fall like a rag doll to the dusty road.

The clock struck the hour, and Ruby banged on the door again. She hollered outside, and it made Lady Mae think of Arbuckle and the way his father would yell in the night. But when she opened her mouth to ask, all that came out was, “What do you advise?”

“Advisory falls outside of our jurisdiction.”