“I wanted to kill him, Arbuckle. Thought all afternoon how, and I think I got it worked out—”

“And you ain’t see the problem in that? Then they’d come after you.”

“He don’t deserve to live.”

“No, he don’t,” said Arbuckle. “But then what? Killing one, killing five. Don’t matter. There’d be other ones, and they’d do to you exactly what they did to your mama. You say anything?”

“No. But I think he knows I recognize him.”

“How would he know?” he asked.

“Not sure. Just felt it is all.”

“Did he say anything else to you? He threaten you?”

“No,” she said because if she said your father and burn up the same way and you’d be just ash Arbuckle might leave again or worse. He was there and there is where Lady Mae wanted him always. And so she kept to herself the laughter she’d heard on the Deputy’s lips and pushed down the dread that crept up the back of her neck. She remained silent knowing that when night fell she would lay wide awake thinking of Deputy Iverson and the what and when.

Arbuckle gently moved a piece of hair that had swept into Lady Mae’s eyes. “Listen,” he said softly. “I know I came back to take the helm, but that ain’t the only reason I’m here right now.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t want this for you, and I don’t rightly think you want this for you, neither. I wrote you something, Lady Mae,” he said and patted his breast pocket.

“What’s that now?”

“I wrote you a letter because the only way I knew I could say what had to be said was putting ink down. When I’m near you, it’s like I can’t remember everything, like the things I know I got to say to you—well, just seems like they float away,” he said.

He reached into his pocket to pull out the letter, but Lady Mae put her hand on his. “You know you can tell me anything. Tell me everything if you got to,” she said.

“You and I—we could be out there,” he said, and tilted his head back in the direction of the hills and mountains. “I told you, just you and me, and as long as we stay high up through the winter they won’t be able to find us. Won’t ride that far come the cold. I know you got it in you, to leave. Know you got other things, too.”

“Go on now, hush,” she said. But she had wondered what was out there, especially when he’d written of the snow and the bears and the quiet—it was always so quiet—and she thought of the white of winter and in front of a fire the two of them curled into one. She wanted to go there—wherever there was—and in the hot sun of late summer she stared at the boy from her childhood who was now a man. His lips moved as he told her it ain’t right and trust me and I wrote it all down here, but she did not hear him. Instead, her hands found his, and she pulled him into her. She buried her head into his chest, pressed her lips into his rough shirt, breathed in the smell of home. Her hands glided up his arms and over his strong shoulders, and she clasped them behind his neck. The wind stopped, the last of the sun fell behind the ridgeline, and she pulled his head down to hers. Her lips found his, shyly and gently at first, and as they kissed in the falling light of the summer’s evening it was clear: everything that was in her heart was in his, too.