“Hello,” she said, keeping her eyes low and studying the keys she held in her hand. She locked up the door quickly and then moved to the side out of the glare of the setting sun.

She had thought all afternoon whether she would tell Arbuckle that Deputy Iverson came to see her. That he was the one. And if she did, would she tell him all of it? Of how Arbuckle’s name had fallen off the Deputy’s lips? Of how with just one mention of her only friend she saw again that summer’s night, her mother’s body, heard the cicadas reverberating in the cottonwoods? She’d wanted to kill him, but then what? She’d have to have run, leaving Arbuckle to wonder after her or worse. No, the mention of his name had kept her thinking clearly, even if the pail handle in her hand pierced her palm.

“Arbuckle,” she said and looked up at him. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed that his brow was creased, his eyes red and swollen.

“What is it?” she asked and instinctively reached up to place her hand on his cheek. She felt the soft hairs of his beard and the crisp line of his jaw. Arbuckle brought his own hand to hers, and there they stood looking at each other, the wind pounding against them, its howl interrupting their silence.

“Went by my pa’s place today,” he said.

“And?” she asked quietly.

“And it weren’t there. Knew it wouldn’t be, but still.”

“I told you I’d go with you,” she said. “Didn’t think you should be going alone—”

“It was like I could smell the smoke,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her. “Like it was in me. I could taste it. Made me think of you.”

“Me?” Lady Mae brought her hand down to her chest. Her fingers fiddled with the button of her collar.

“Well, I didn’t mean—it’s just with your mama and all. Can’t imagine what it was like for you.”

“Yes, you can. You was there. For a spell, anyways.”

“I was,” he said, and reached up with his other hand, grasped hers, and lowered it to his chest. He held it there, and she felt his heart beneath his shirt, saw the droplets of sweat on his chest. Though the day was ending it was hot still, and beyond them in the distance, she could see the rippling waves of heat rise up toward the sky. “I was always there,” he said, “even when I weren’t.”

She wished to take his face in her hands and say don’t matter now and could we be. She wished to bring his eyes to her lips and gently place them upon his eyelids, hold them there until the pain passed. But what tumbled in his heart had to run its course; even if he hated his father all this time, he still had sought love. And Lady Mae reckoned that it wasn’t hate Arbuckle felt for his father, after all. It was a deep pity and a stretching of his heart, an anger down in his belly. It was the nameless rage understood so long ago, now flapping and floating at his seams. Lady Mae knew because it was in her, too.