But then, as if they’d been doing it their whole lives, their arms found each other. They held each other tightly as if they were drowning, sinking down into the murky waters of memory. Lady Mae’s head fit just right into the curve of Arbuckle’s neck. They stood as one, pressed together by an unseen force, and when they pulled away from each other, they found themselves alone in the square, the hot wind blowing from the west and carrying with it the promise of rain.

When their bodies broke from each other, Arbuckle cupped her chin in his hand, which was rough and warm. It had been years since she was touched in such a familial and loving way. Her eyes went hot, her teeth ground as she tried to stave off the welling sorrow working its way out of her. But it was of no use. The tears came, fell from her lids to the dust, and when she looked down, she saw the wet earth at the tips of her toes.

“Lady Mae, what’s all this?” he asked as he brought his thumb to her cheek. “Thought you’d be mad at me.”

“I was. I am.” She brought her forearm up to her face and wiped her cheeks with the rough fabric of her dress.

“I know it.”

Three birds circled overhead in a westward current. Their wings beat against blue sky, and Arbuckle looked up. He kept his palm on Lady Mae’s cheek, and while he stared after the birds, she studied his face. His lankiness was gone; he was a man, no longer a child under his father’s thumb. There was a tumble deep down, a knocking at her ribs; Arbuckle was back, and the fullness of it all nearly took her breath away.

“Look at us,” Lady Mae said.

“I’ll say.”

“You look well.”

“As do you. How high are them boots?”

“Ain’t much. I grew is all.”

“So you did, so you did.”

“You as well.”

He pushed up his sleeves to his elbows and dropped his eyes. “Well, I am newly twenty-five.”

“That’d be right.”

Their eyes held, squinting but not daring to blink. She was afraid to look elsewhere, as if even a momentary disappearance of his face would set her back nearly six years. How had she managed all this time? Bit by bit, cut by cut. In each she felt both a relief and an unrest—this was what she had to do to live. And that’s what her mother wanted. She assumed Arbuckle, too. So she had done it over and over again until it was like running her hands under cool water at the end of a day, both mechanical and necessary.

“Well, what now?” Arbuckle asked.

“Thought we’d go back to my shack. Unless—”

“You ain’t got to go to the depot?”

“I was already there. That’s why—”

She cast her eyes toward the dusty earth and stared at the tips of her tattered boots, at the dirt lining the edges of her skirts, hoping that he did not notice the splatters of dried blood that could never come clean. A shame rose, knotted and lead-like.