As she packed a large satchel—for she did not own a suitcase—she did so slowly. She placed her petticoats and the warmest dress she had in the bottom of the sack, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The light through the bedroom window outlined her figure in a late summer’s halo. She looked like her mother; she had lost the look of childhood without noticing, but she did not feel like the person she saw in the reflection. That person was beautiful and full of grace, and though a satisfying resolve had been with her since she returned home from the courthouse, she was no less haunted by her own self. She would carry her satchel up into the mountains, but she would also carry what she’d done, the blood of which she’d never scrub clean from her hands. She had resigned herself to walking away from it all—the tangled mass, the blood in the pine, the bones in the ground. She’d receive no closure, and though her days and nights might be filled with a rage she could not diffuse, what else was she to do?

The sun was low in the sky when there was a knock on her door—Lady Mae went to it but did not look out the window. Even if she had, it would’ve made no difference, for when she opened her door she saw in front of her Deputy Iverson. His shoulders twitched and jittered, and he put his small hands in his pockets and hoisted up his pants underneath his large belly. She stepped back as if she had been struck, and he lurched his body across the threshold. There he stood in her living room, the hot wind blowing behind him.

He took off his hat, and as he did, she saw the four lines, felt his flesh underneath her fingernails still. He mopped his nearly bald head with a handkerchief and placed it back in his pocket. He sucked his teeth and kept his eyes on hers, and a joyous urge rippled on his face. Hot dread pooled in the back of her skull and inched its way down her body until she felt the prickling fear in her fingertips; the Deputy was there and she was there and the two of them were as alone as could be. To her right, just inside the door where the Deputy could not see, was an umbrella, the tip of which was sharp enough—she could make it up into the hills. But Arbuckle had not yet returned and so in the steadiest voice she could muster, she asked, “Can I help you?”

He licked his plump, glistening lips and spoke. “Your boy,” he said. “He’s been making trouble.”

“My boy?”

He reached his finger to his teeth. As he stuck his rotten nail in the cracks he said, “Come now, Lady Mae: Arbuckle. Came charging up to the courthouse claiming this and that, mighty heavy claims at that. Reckon you know anything about it?”