Then she noticed the blood and came toward him, saying, “Luther, baby, you need a doctor. What happened? What happened?”

Luther held her back. He gripped her shoulders as if she were a chair he needed to find a place for and he looked around the room and said, “You need to pack.”

“What?”

“Blood ain’t mine. I ain’t hurt. You need to pack.”

“Luther, Luther, look at me, Luther.”

He looked at her.

“What happened?”

“Jessie’s dead,” he said. “Jessie’s dead and Dandy, too.”

“Who’s Dandy?”

“Worked for the Deacon. Deacon’s dead. Deacon’s brains all over a wall.”

She stepped back from him. She touched her hands to her throat because she didn’t know where else to put them. She said, “What have you done?”

Luther said, “You got to pack, Lila. We got to run.”

“I ain’t running,” she said.

“What?” He cocked his head at her, only a few inches away, but she felt as if he was a thousand miles on the other side of the world.

“I ain’t leaving here,” she said.

“Yes you are, woman.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Lila, I’m serious. Pack a fucking bag.”

She shook her head.

Luther clenched his fists and his eyes were hooded. He crossed the room and put his fist through the clock hanging above the couch. “We are leaving.”

She watched the glass fall to the top of the couch, saw that the second hand still ticked. So she’d repair it. She could do that.

“Jessie’s dead,” she said. “That’s what you come home to tell me? Man got himself killed, near got you killed, and you expect me to say you my man and I’m’a pack a bag right quick and leave my home because I love you?”

“Yes,” he said and took her shoulders in his hands again. “Yes.”

“Well, I ain’t,” she said. “You a fool. I told you what running with that boy and running with the Deacon would get you and now you come in here covered in the wages of your sin, covered in other men’s blood, and you want what?”

“Want you to leave with me.”

“You kill tonight, Luther?”

His eyes were lost and his voice a whisper. “I killed the Deacon. I shot him straight up through his head.”

“Why?” she said, her voice a whisper now, too.

“Because he the reason Jessie dead.”

“And who’d Jessie kill?”

“Jessie killed Dandy. Smoke killed Jessie and I shot Smoke. He probably die, too.”

She could feel the anger building in her, washing over the fear and the pity and the love. “So Jessie Tell kill a man and then a man shoot him and then you shoot that man and then kill the Deacon? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes. Now—”

“Is that what you’re telling me?” she yelled and beat his shoulders and his chest with her fists and then slapped him hard across the side of the head and would have kept on going if he didn’t grab her wrists in his.