He ain’t going to understand, Mama.

Not if you don’t give him a chance, my girl.

“That’s why what?”

“There was a woman, and she—”

“Someone come at you?” Arbuckle asked. He brought his hand to her arm and squeezed it gently.

“No. Ain’t no one lay a hand on me since the inheritance,” Lady Mae said.

“They don’t need to lay hands on to hurt you.” In his eyes she saw the concern and for that she chastised herself. She did not want his pity.

“I ain’t hurt.”

Arbuckle said nothing in return, but she watched his chest rise with each breath, watched him work his jaw like he always had. She wanted to grab his arms, press into him the words you got your own lot and just as bad. He’d talked in his letters how things would be different once he was in charge at the cannery, but Lady Mae understood that not all things intended took hold, and not all that took hold was intended. Arbuckle would do what he’d need to do just as all the other residents had, including Lady Mae herself. But he was not made of the same mortar as the others; he had risen out of his own mother’s ashes with hope in his heart. And Lady Mae feared it would kill him dead.

“Just wanted to tell you why I was late is all,” Lady Mae said.

He didn’t believe her. She never could lie to him, but she didn’t want to have to explain—not there. There was Ruby’s talk of her mother, the Deputy on the telephone, and they both sprung in her a fear so mighty that though she tried, she could not push both back down into the bubbling mass.

“This place changed much?” he asked.

She knew what he wasn’t asking. She’d told him herself, the letter written and sent even before the timber stopped smoking. His father’s shack had caught fire and there had been no water to put it out. The flames were too hot to see if his father was still in there, but when it had burned to the ground, Wilson took a long pole and walking around the scorched perimeter, poked at the ash until he found bones. And so while Arbuckle did not mention his father, Lady Mae understood how the absence of an only parent, even if they’d been a monster, left a chasm that nothing could fill. He’d ask after his father when he was ready; perhaps when night came and they were safe in her shack together, she’d tell him about that night—what she’d heard about it at least—and say we both got ash now.

“Want to go by it?” Lady Mae asked.

“Don’t know,” he said and tucked his lower lip under his teeth.

“I’ll come with if you want.”

“It ain’t that.” He shook his head and looked down at the ground.

“Then what?”

Arbuckle then raised his head toward the hills, at the switch grass and salvias that still bloomed despite the heat. Although his face was turned away from her, she knew his eyes worried. His shoulders hunched, and he took his suitcase from one hand to the other.