They left the police station and got in the car. Her mother almost hit the curb as she pulled onto the road. She drove for a few minutes but then made a turn into the nearest parking lot to a Big Lots. At this time of day, the lot was mostly empty, a few straggling cars scattered close to the entrance. Mira’s mother pulled into a spot and shifted the gear into park and turned to her daughter. “What were you thinking? God, Mira, after everything I’ve tried to teach you. Do you see now? They’re never going to care about what you say. You get it? I don’t want you to have to learn this lesson twice.”

“Yes,” Mira had said, and her mother, seeing the pain her daughter was in, pulled back onto the road to home.

Perhaps she should have tried harder. She could have chosen not to listen to her mother, trying again and again until someone heard, but what Mira learned that day was how easy it was to let someone convince you of their truth instead of believing in your own. She could not stop hearing the sheriff’s words and his reasons for her story. He would never believe her, no matter what she said, and no one else would either.

But Jesse was let go. Celine confirmed what Jesse and Mira had insisted was true. One look at her was all Brody needed, and so the police accepted Jesse’s alibi, even though they didn’t fully believe it.

To believe, one must care, and who’s to say anyone ever cared? That’s what her mother had tried to tell her. That’s what she’d tried to make her see. Who was to say anyone ever cared—for Jesse, for her, for any of the black kids like them? Who’s to say anyone ever cared at all?

Once, they stole away.

Once, they stole away. They’d heard the sorrow song’s call, heard its meaning within, and as the sun descended, they lumbered their way home for the last time. Moonrise, they gathered across the grounds they’d always known, moving toward the churchyard, toward beyond, tender-footed as they stepped across the bones of their brethren buried below.

They moved through the underbrush, scratched the sores that formed from the insects that bit their skin. Ever cautious of rattlesnakes hidden in the grass. Down to the river they went, seeing the sprawling willow tree with its broken bough pointing to their deliverance. They followed the trail to the forest. Soon it would clear, showing a path into the water. They were told the water would save them. It would wash away their sins, cleanse their souls, and they waded into the water, waiting for their brothers and sisters who would steal them away to their new home.