Jesse got up from the couch and gathered all the papers spread out on the table. He was furious but was trying very hard to contain it. He piled the papers on top of one another and stuffed them in a folder. A few slipped out and fell on the floor but he didn’t bother to pick them up. Instead he took the folder and threw it down. He rubbed his hand across his wrinkled forehead. “You don’t know what it was like,” he muttered. “I was the one they blamed. Not you, me. I was the one they tried to lock up, and after— Once, I came off a shift at work and saw that my tires had been slashed. All four of them, the rubber gashed with a knife. I tried to let it go because what could I do? Go to the police? The police who’d just as soon lock me up again? So I ignored it, hoping it’d all die down, but then strangers started showing up at the house. I heard some hollering one night and then a loud bang, saw after they left that they’d bashed the mailbox. Once they threw rocks and broke the front windows. Glass shattered all inside. In the morning I went outside and they’d hung a noose from one of the trees. I took it down and a few days later another appeared. I asked the neighbors if they saw who’d done it and none of them would tell me. None of them wanted to. They were too scared to say anything. Even my uncle—eventually he said to just leave it, so we left it there for weeks and weeks until one day it was finally gone. I couldn’t take it anymore. My uncle said he had a friend that could get me some work in Louisiana if I went there. Said he’d help me out with a place to stay too. So I left. I never meant to come back, but when my uncle got sick, I had to, and then—Well, you know the rest of it already.”

Mira sat listening, finally, to the rest of what he’d kept from her. Here was the final piece of his story, and she could not blame him for what he wanted to do. None of it should have happened. But she couldn’t just let them die.

Outside, the sun’s orange glow dimmed, signaling the twilight hour. Night was coming. Whatever was bound to happen would begin soon. They needed to leave and she had to warn them before it was too late.

“Why can’t you consider for a moment that maybe—I mean, think about all the harm they’ve done. What they continue to let happen right in front of them. You’ve seen the photos. I’ve told you some of the stories, and there’s so much more.”