But she paused. To tell Arbuckle of the strings that stretched out from her insides—that this one was her mother, and the next the Deputy, and so on, each one tied so tight she nearly suffocated from their grip. She dragged them with her at all times, pulling the weight of the loss and wonder behind her. So long had she carried it, but she did not wish to worry Arbuckle any more than he was. She was afraid of his worry, what he’d do with it, and where it would go should he not be able to contain it.

“Come on, I know you ain’t telling me everything,” he said.

“Brought up my mama,” she admitted.

“That it?”

“Said I ought to know better than to ask questions.”

She looked at him then, at his beautiful eyes and strong forearms. What she saw was no surprise, though had she really expected it? Who he’d been before he left, who he was now—he was one and the same and she was glad for it, she supposed; she could count on him like daybreak, feel him close even when he was far away. But a flash of panic was there in his stare.

“Don’t necessarily mean nothing, right?” she asked.

“Nothing means nothing, Lady Mae.”

He was right. Whatever the Deputy had said or didn’t say sat heavy and hard. But how could she tell Arbuckle that he was on the scaffold? Of his scars made bright by the sun? To tell Arbuckle would make it true. All those years wondering, all those nights spent wishing for just a glimpse; if her suspicions were right, he was but arm’s length from her, close enough to get at with her eager hands.

The fire spat and the griddlecakes smoked on the stove. Arbuckle stood and took up a fork. He made his way to the stove slowly, his body sore from the beating. “Someone say something like that to you—that’s a threat. Don’t matter if it was a Deputy.”

He turned back to the stove where the griddlecakes smoked. He flipped them one by one onto a plate and put the plate on the table. But as he did so he shook his head slowly, deeply, as if what Lady Mae had just told him weighed more than he could withstand. “Just ain’t right,” he said with his back to her. “You got to do something. Or I’ll—”

“You ain’t doing nothing. This is just the way it is.”

Arbuckle spun around. His eyes were wild, and in his hand he held the spatula tightly enough that Lady Mae could see the veins and bones in his hand from where she sat. “And that’s enough for you?”

“Got to be,” she said.

“But—what they did to your mama—how—”

“I know it. You think I don’t? Every day I see it; it’s in here till the end of time,” she said, and touched her head at her temple.

“Okay, Lady Mae, okay,” he said and sat finally. The light was just coming up through the eastern window, a smoke-filled shaft floated above the small table. They sat close, silently, and their forks scraped the metal plates as they cut into their griddlecakes. Arbuckle’s cheeks were flushed from tending the fire, and his hair fell across his forehead. Lady Mae kept her eyes on her plate so that she would not stare at him and wonder what it would be like to have him there always.