Not that it matters. Anyone who’s watching is wasting his time. I’ve already lost everything.

News of the murder sends the town of Dahlonega into a frenzy, and the next few days are a blur. I have visitors every waking minute, which makes me feel a lot safer but puts a terrible ache in my head. Everyone’s condolences have an edge of excitement to them. When Mr. Cooper, superintendent at the U.S. Mint, lends all his assayers and other staff to Sheriff Weber for a search of the woods around town for the murderer, it becomes almost like a holiday.

Mama said to run, but I’ve no place to go. This is my home. I’ve worked just as hard to build it up as Mama or Daddy ever did, and I won’t let anyone scare me away. So I sit in my house for days, pretending to be grateful for company, waiting and waiting for news that doesn’t come. I keep the five-shooter close by and ready, breaking a rule about loaded guns in the house. I hope to hear that bandits have been raiding the mountains, that mine isn’t the only house they hit, because that would mean I’m probably safe now. It would mean Mama wasn’t trying to warn me about anyone in particular.

The search of the woods reveals nothing. Sheriff Weber asks around at Mrs. Choice’s hotel and Free Jim’s store, where they say a steady stream of strangers have been passing through all week on their way to the gold fields of California. He eventually concludes that the awful deed was perpetrated by bandits looking for Lucky’s secret stash—which I assure him never existed—and that they’re probably well west of here by now, along with all the other good-for-nothings.

I’m not convinced he’s right, and it makes me a little sick for my parents’ murders to be put to rest so easily. But God help me if I’m not a little relieved too. I don’t know what I’m going to do next or how I’ll run a homestead all by myself. Maybe after the funeral I’ll finally have time and space to think it all through, away from prying eyes and wringing hands.

Everyone inquires politely about my parents’ relations, as if somehow their asking will conjure up the kin everyone knows I don’t have. Mama’s family cut her off when she married my daddy, and she hasn’t talked to them since moving away from Boston. Daddy has no blood left but his brother, Hiram, a fancy lawyer way down in the state capital of Milledgeville. In a place where family connections spread out like wild grapevines covering the trees, I’m all alone.

Or not quite all alone. There’s still one person I can turn to for help.