Jessica wandered into the kitchen in cutoff sweats and a T-shirt, grabbed herself a glass and filled it with water from the tap. She was barefoot and had a trucker cap down in her eyes, her hair pulled into a ponytail and threaded through the snap back.

“You’re going native,” Maggie said. “Real Mississippi style.”

“I got the hat at the Salvation Army,” she said. “Like it?”

“Perfect,” Maggie said. “What’s it say?”

“‘Billy Beer,’” Jessica said. “Isn’t that fantastic? I can’t wait to show my dad. He used to have a can of it until it finally corroded and drained all over his bookshelf. It was a real mess. You ever smell beer that’s forty years old?”

“Hope I never do,” Maggie said. “You OK with chicken?”

“I thought you were vegetarian?”

“I am,” she said. “But I’ve learned to cook for everyone. Not everyone is so much into a nice big salad for dinner . . . We have a full house tonight. You and Tashi. Boom. Brandon and hopefully Quinn.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Soon.” Maggie flipped over the chicken, which was turning a nice brown color, Maggie taking pride in her cooking even though she wouldn’t touch it. She’d seen and read enough about the industrial farming complex to turn her stomach. But these birds had been local, raised and killed in Tibbehah County. Quinn always said it was more honest to look what you ate in the eye.

“Is he bringing liquor?” Jessica said, smiling. “He promised some good wine, too.”

“He’ll grab some in Oxford,” Maggie said. “Always does. Good wine makes life tolerable.”

“My head feels like it’s going to explode,” she said. “We’ve come so damn far with this. We’ve been down here for nearly three months and learned so much.”

“It’ll come together.”

“It’ll take us well into next year just to put together the podcast,” Jessica said. “And then it may not run until this summer. Do you have any idea what it’s like to sit on a story like this? We have to just sit back and watch Vardaman get elected and we can’t do a damn thing about it.”

“Quinn’s not happy about it, either.”

“Tashi and I talked about it,” she said. “If we had more, we’d share the story. Take it to someone who could get the information out there. The papers in Jackson and Tupelo. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe CNN. I mean, this is a big story. Do some damage to Vardaman’s campaign. But Ansley won’t go public. And all we really have is her word on what happened and some blurry pictures of the outside of that hunt lodge. We can tell this story in the podcast. But that’ll take time. And then it’ll be too late.”