Certain of it now, Mama.

Always were; just didn’t know, my girl.

When the clock struck seven thirty, she rose from her seat and went to the door, next to which was her satchel. Before retiring for the night, she had packed several items in it. There was a photograph of her and her mother, the edges of which were curled and yellow. She had boots. A thick blanket. Three tins of canned food. It was all she could fit. They needed more, but they needed to get away, to run up into the hills while the earth was still warm and hospitable. They’d figure it out—she’d hunt since he disliked it, and in the glow of a night fire deep beyond the tree line, they’d feast on their spoils in a comfortable silence. Lady Mae placed her hand on the bolt of the door and turned it until it clicked.

As she walked down the crescent road, others came out of their small and dirty shacks. Word got around quickly; the residents had watched Arbuckle and Lady Mae for over twenty years and were no doubt eager to see the two of them together in the courtroom again. It was no surprise; the residents insulted Arbuckle as well, insinuated many things, all of which were equally terrible, but he and Lady Mae never spoke about it. That they did not repeat the words in each other’s presence helped quell the embarrassment and shame Lady Mae felt. Arbuckle had been called a bastard and a misfit when he was young, a scoundrel and vagabond as he aged and went off into the hills. He was none of those things, but still, she saw how it smote him, how he carried it upon his shoulders. He hurt like her, and on the dusty road, she realized it for perhaps the first time. She’d be glad when they were free, even if it meant a life without a guarantee of survival.

Despite being awake since before dawn, she was the last to enter the courtroom on that sweltering day. The crowd, who sat facing the bench, turned as she opened the large wooden door. The residents’ eyes fell upon her face, her skirts, down to her feet, which sweat in her tightly laced boots. Her throat went dry, and there was a surge in her chest that would follow her to her seat and stay with her long after the stares had subsided. She walked down the aisle and took the seat third from the back as the front was brimming with bodies already too warm for the room. She could see the accused’s stand, and it was empty. Deputies Griffin and Worth stood before it. Arbuckle was somewhere in that building beneath her. He had spent a night under the watchful eyes of the Deputies. Maybe they’d already gotten to him and Deputy Daniels would come out from his chambers and tell the residents to go home. No one would object—Arbuckle and the ghost of his bastardly father would finally be gone. But then the large wooden doors behind her opened, and she turned her body to see Deputy Iverson, the four lines, his fat, sweating face underneath his tall hat. Behind him walked Arbuckle, flanked on the right by Deputy Parson. All five of the settlement’s Deputies were in the courtroom; what if Lady Mae struck a match and sent them all into the sky?