“It is,” the sheriff conceded. “Mind you, plenty of moonshiners around here ain’t never seen the inside of a cell either.”

“Objection!”

“I’m just saying, Your Honor. Just because a person ain’t been arrested don’t mean they behave like an angel. You know how things work around these parts.”

The judge ordered the statement expunged from the record. But it had done what the sheriff had known it would, and stained Margery’s name in some vague, unformed way, and Alice watched the jurors frowning and making little notes on their pads and saw Van Cleve’s slow, satisfied smile along the bench. Fred had noted that the sheriff now smoked the same brand of fancy cigar as Van Cleve, imported all the way from France.

How was that for a coincidence?

* * *

• • •

By Friday evening the librarians were despondent. Lurid headline had followed lurid headline, the crowds, while having thinned a little, at least to the point where baskets of food and drink were no longer having to be raised and lowered from the second floor, were still transfixed by the Bloodthirsty Girl Librarian From The Hills, and when Fred had driven over to see Sven on Friday afternoon after the court had gone into recess for the weekend to give him a report from inside the court, Sven had put his head in his hands and not spoken for a full five minutes.

That day the women walked down to the library and sat in silence, not having anything to say, but none of them wanting to leave for home either. Finally Alice, who had begun to find the silence oppressive, announced that she was going to head to the store to get some drinks. “I reckon we’ve earned them.”

“You don’t mind being seen buying alcohol?” said Beth. “’Cause I can go get some ’shine from my daddy’s cousin Bert, if you’d prefer. I know it’s hard for you with—”

But Alice was already at the door. “To Hell with them. I’ll most likely be gone within the week,” she said. “They can gossip about me all they like by then.”

She walked down the dusty street, weaving in and out of the strangers who, having exhausted the day’s entertainments at the courthouse, were now zigzagging to the honky-tonks or the Nice ’N’ Quick, all of which were struggling to feel too bad for Margery O’Hare, given the roaring trade. She walked briskly, her head down and her elbows slightly out, not wanting to exchange small talk or even acknowledge any of those neighbors to whom she and Margery had brought books over the past year, and who now appeared traitorous enough to be enjoying the week’s events. They could go to Hell, too.

She pushed her way into the store, stopping in her tracks and sighing inwardly as she realized there would be at least fifteen people in the queue before her, and glanced behind her, wondering if it was worth heading to one of the bars to see if they would sell her something instead. What kind of a crowd would be in there? She was so full of anger, these days, that she felt like a tinder box, as if it would take only one wrong comment from one of these fools for her to—

She felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Alice?”

She turned. And there, by the preserves and canned goods, dressed in his shirtsleeves and his good blue trousers, without a speck of coal dust on him, stood Bennett. He had probably just finished work, but looked, as ever, as fresh as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a Sears catalog.

“Bennett,” she said, blinked and looked away. It wasn’t as if she was physically moved by him any more, she realized, searching for the reason for her sudden discomfort. There was only the vaguest hint of residual affection. What she felt was mostly disbelief that this man, standing here, was someone she had wrapped herself around, skin to skin, kissed and pleaded for physical contact with. This strange, unbalanced intimacy made her feel vaguely ashamed now.

“I . . . I heard you were leaving town.”

She picked up a can of tomatoes, just for something to do with her hands. “Yup. Trial looks to end on Tuesday. I’ll be headed out on Wednesday. You and your father won’t have to worry about me hanging around.”

Bennett glanced behind him, perhaps conscious that people might be watching, but all the customers were out-of-towners, and nobody saw anything gossip-worthy in a man and a woman exchanging a few words in the corner of the store.

“Alice—”

“You don’t have to say anything, Bennett. I think we’ve said enough. My parents have engaged a lawyer and—”

He touched her sleeve. “Pa says nobody managed to speak to his daughters.”

She pulled back her hand. “I’m sorry? What?”

Bennett looked behind him, his voice low. “Pa said the sheriff never spoke to McCullough’s daughters. They wouldn’t open the door. They shouted to his men they had nothing to say on the matter and they wouldn’t be talking to nobody. He says they’re both crazy, like the rest of the family. Says the state’s case is strong enough not to need them anyway.” He looked at her intently.

“Why are you telling me this?”

He chewed at his lip. “Figured . . . I figured . . . it might help you.”

She stared at him then, at his handsome, slightly unformed face, and his baby-soft hands, his anxious eyes. And briefly she felt her own face fall a little.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry too, Bennett.”

He took a step back, ran a hand down his face.

They stood for a moment longer, shifting a little on their feet.

“Well,” he said eventually. “If I don’t see you before you leave . . . safe travels.”

She nodded. He headed for the door. As he reached it he turned, his voice lifting a little to be heard. “Oh. Thought you’d like to know I’m fixing to get the slurry dams made up. With proper housing and a cement base. So they can’t burst again.”

“Your father agreed to that?”

“He will.” The smallest smile, a flash of someone she had once known.

“That’s good news, Bennett. Really good news.”

“Yeah. Well.” He looked down. “It’s a start.”

With that her husband tipped his hat, opened the door, and was swallowed by the crowds still milling around outside.

* * *

• • •

The sheriff didn’t speak to his daughters? Why not?” Sophia shook her head. “It doesn’t make no sense to me.”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” said Kathleen, from the corner, where she was stitching a broken stirrup leather, grimacing as she forced the huge needle through the leather. “They got all the way up to Arnott’s Ridge, to a family they was expecting trouble from. They figure the girls wouldn’t know nothing about their daddy’s movements, given he was a known drunk who used to disappear for days on end. So they knock a few times, get told to git, then give up and come back down, and it takes them half a day each way to do it.”