“Yearly it is,” said Deputy Daniels. Then, to Lady Mae and Arbuckle, “Please rise. What is your sentence?”

She looked at Arbuckle and saw his squared jaw and folded arms. He’d want her to tell the truth—that she’d wanted just one—but that kind of truth was treacherous. All she had to do was think of how Arbuckle’s name had rolled heavy off Deputy Iverson’s tongue and echoed in the dusty air.

“Four,” she said.

“Mr. Anfield?”

“One,” Arbuckle said.

“A fair judgment indeed.” Deputy Daniels brought the gavel down to the table and struck it three times, each one ringing long in Lady Mae’s ears. Mr. Timothy Edmonds said nothing, but he did not need to; the upturned corner of his lip was enough.

* * *

By the time she and Arbuckle left the courthouse, the crowd had gathered again on the courthouse steps. It had grown and was now two, perhaps three residents deep. Others who had not been in court had joined the group, and when Lady Mae saw this, she reached again for Arbuckle’s hand. The two of them walked down the steps and away from the crowd, even though it was in the opposite direction of both her shack and the depot. Lady Mae didn’t care—she wanted only to get away, to be invisible and small. But everyone knew her face, her walk, her hair, her hands. And there was no escaping them.

When they neared the southernmost corner of the square, they turned right and headed down the small alleyway behind the shops in order to get back to the road that led to the depot. She took one last look at the crowd before disappearing behind the building and felt a strange relief at seeing the residents heading north. She wasn’t running, but she was glad to be away from them. She’d never run from anyone; she had only avoided as her mother had taught her. She’d heeded those words, the careful and eyes down and their loss for so many years—for what? The residents watched her, spat at her as she walked by. They denounced her and forsook her name. They shunned her and ridiculed her, and she had done nothing except be her mother’s only daughter.

“Lady Mae,” Arbuckle said, the concern rising in his voice. “This is crazy! This how your life is?”

“No,” she said and glanced back over her shoulder, seeing nothing but the trash heaps and soiled mops that sat outside of the shops’ rear doors. “Not really. It’s not—I don’t go into town much.” She fumbled for the words that she couldn’t grasp and couldn’t say, the same ones she couldn’t see, couldn’t read in Arbuckle’s letters. They were there all around her, but to put them together—what then? Her throat tightened and her eyes stung hot. Arbuckle’s hand held hers tightly.

“This ain’t right, Lady Mae. I know it. You know it. They treat you like, like—this ain’t no way to live, running like this,” he said.