Lady Mae stood still. She did not take her eyes from the Deputy, but she did not see him either. Instead she saw the hills, the wintry mountain on the darkest of days, Arbuckle’s smile, her mother’s gaping mouth. She stood, unable to speak or respond, unable to do anything but softly teeter on her own two feet.

“Any truth to this, Lady Mae? You been doubting in your heart?”

Truth. What was true at all anymore? All this time she had been ignorant, up to her elbows in blood, her heart sour and alone. Arbuckle had left without telling her, wrote without admitting, returned without suggesting. And now she knew why he’d never been quick to give her answers in her studies nor offered his opinion before she asked it. He simply waited for her to get there on her own because—and in that moment she understood—he believed in her goodness. She was a butcher, yes, but he saw in her all that she was and could be and loved her as she wished to be loved—down into her soul she felt it. The Deputy had read the words, but she’d heard only Arbuckle’s voice pure and strong.

And if she said it was the truth? Her eyes dropped and she bowed her head to look at the floor. The rug, which had covered it for five years, was threadbare right above the invisible stain. Lady Mae had lain on the floor at night for years tracing the motifs with her nails, the pile worn down and faded. If she said yes there was truth, then what? What then if she said no?

What am I supposed to do, Mama?

Why you got to choose, my girl.

“What say you, Lady Mae?”

“I—I don’t know—I didn’t know—”

“I, I, I, I—spit it out, girl.”

The umbrella was close. But they had Arbuckle and they’d kill him. They’d kill her, too. The only way was to lie. She’d say no—Arbuckle would be charged with falsification, he’d get atonements. And when he came to the depot she’d have their bags ready. They’d stay there into the night; it wouldn’t be the first time the butcher was with a patient in the dark. When it was safe, they’d sneak out the back and quietly run toward the hills holding their small bags tightly to their chests. They’d run until they could run no more, until the sun rose and their feet stopped underneath them. There they’d collapse, spent but alive.

“No,” she said.

“You speaking truthfully, now?”

“Aye.”

“Court’s at eight, then.”

He turned and walked out of her shack, down the gravel path, along the dusty road, and there in the emptiness of a darkened room, Lady Mae whispered Arbuckle’s name, touched her heart, and closed the door.

14

When the sun rose the next morning, Lady Mae was sitting on the sofa in her living room. She stared at Arbuckle’s empty cot, felt her great-grandmother’s quilt around her shoulder blades. The night had brought with it dreams fearsome and wild, and every time Lady Mae closed her eyes there was only Deputy Iverson, her mother’s ghost, the discolored knots in the pine floor. She saw it all again, watched it over and over as she had nearly six years before. A fear—the same one that had lived in her since—crept out of the dark chasm deep beneath her heart. She tried to disregard it; after all, Arbuckle’s crime was different. He hadn’t gone against his inheritance, just said the thing Lady Mae supposed she’d always known to be true: that she knew what was just and what wasn’t. She felt it there as the sun inched its way above the peaks to the east. The trial would be quick; they’d cry falsification and atonements and after he arrived at the depot she’d wrap her arms around him, bring his lips to her own, and whisper it was in me and you always known and how could I ever live without.