“I never meant,” Arbuckle began, clearing his throat, “I didn’t mean to upset you. Thought about it endlessly last night before I finally drifted off; I know you ain’t got no choice, no more than I.”

“We all got our lots. Least you got out for a spell,” she said. He must’ve heard in her voice the deep betrayal that sat unmoving and invisible. He placed his hand over hers gently. His fingers found their way between hers, and she could not swallow the piece of griddlecake that she had in her mouth. He moved his index finger and thumb softly upon her own hand, and she could not move. Though she had tried to ignore it each time it came to mind, she had thought of Arbuckle. Thought of his eyes, the way he smiled when she joked, his laugh. She thought of the sound of his voice, dreamed of the whispers he might say to her in the cover of night.

“You mad at me for leaving, ain’t you?”

“Don’t know,” she lied. “Don’t really matter now, does it?”

He opened his mouth to say something else, but then smiled instead and took his hand back away from hers, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just want you to know I did what I had to do. Might not have been the right thing, but it’s what I did.”

“I know it,” she said. “We all do what we got to do.”

But the words how could you and why not me skittered up her throat. She wanted to grab his hand and tell him how it broke her when he left. Didn’t he know how she had drifted all that time, her head barely above water?

“I was glad to get your letters,” he said.

“Me too.”

“Got pretty lonely, I admit.”

“Where were you, anyways?”

“In the hills. Straight eastward. Up there’s a clearing.”

“And the Deputies let you be?” she asked.

“Mostly. Came around a few times a year.”

“What’d they want?”

“Make sure I was still there, that I hadn’t run off up and over the mountain,” he said.

“Could you have?”

“Sure. Few times I was out pretty far for weeks at a time laying traps. Didn’t see nobody that high up.”

“Did you think about it?”

“Nearly every day.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“’Cause you were here. Thought lots about coming to get you.”

He said it without hesitation, as though the words had always lain upon his tongue. It was immediate and she heard in his voice the truth. He could’ve gone and left for good, could’ve escaped. He could’ve gotten away. A guilt, fulsome and unyielding, seeped in. It was because of her that he’d come back when he might’ve found the forgiveness he searched for somewhere beyond the hills and mountains. Perhaps there was a place beyond the settlements that stretched far and wide. And even if there wasn’t, perhaps he could’ve made a place for his own. If he had, would she have had it in her to find him?