11

The next day Lady Mae set her kit down inside the door of the depot, and the light shone through the window, which was dusty and brown from the drought. She grabbed a pail and brought it out to the pump. Up and down she moved her arm and watched the water slosh into the pail. She reached in her pocket and took a fistful of cleaning granules that she had taken from inside and tossed them in with the water. The water foamed and bubbled. She turned off the pump and carried the pail with two hands back up the three steps of the depot and went to the only window. She moved slowly, dipping a rag in the water and then washing two full rotations clockwise before putting it back in the pail. Her sleeves darkened, and the water found its way up her arm. She was thankful for the respite.

She and Arbuckle had spoken late into the night, and when she woke that morning she knew one thing for certain: the swelling in her heart, the fullness that came from being so close to him after all that time—his return meant more than just that he was back. One day was all it took, and the hovering mass in her periphery was nowhere to be seen. Gone were the tangled strings that had floated just beyond her reach, the gnarled and frayed ends that had almost bound her interminably. Instead, what remained, what had been unearthed, was a sudden hope that came on so quickly it stung.

That hope had lifted her out of bed, and though she could not calm the thoughts that swirled around her tongue, she had gone to her dresser to ready herself. But whatever she had felt or thought or wished to be disappeared when she saw herself in the mirror. Her hair, uncombed, fell to nearly her waist. She wore a long nightgown that hid her full breasts and hips. She did not look like herself but did not know who herself was. Two days before she’d been just the butcher, still a child in her own mind. And now, now. It was a feeling she could not name, one that had hung heavy behind her eyes.

Will I always be, Mama?

No such thing as always, my girl.

Lady Mae wiped the final streaks dry from the window that she was cleaning. When she bent to pick up the pail, she caught a movement behind her. She stilled for just a moment and held her breath. There was the slip of gravel and the clearing of a throat, and in the window, she saw a reflection in addition to her own. Her pocket watch had read nine thirty last she checked, and her patient was not set to arrive until ten o’clock.

“You the butcher?” a man’s voice asked.

She kept her back to the resident as she picked the dirty rags up off the porch and put them in the near empty pail. “Aye,” she said. “You’re early.”