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had nothing more than a washstand, a bucket, and a small wooden table with one chair. I ran my finger along the table’s top, leaving a line in the dust. She must have cooked in the main house and either eaten there with Isaac and the boys or brought her food back here to eat alone. It looked sad. It was punishment. It was what Isaac had wanted.
    I went to the back of the main room and made my way up the stairs, pausing to test each step to be sure it held, knowing the splintery rail couldn’t save me if I fell. When I reached the upper floor, I saw two closed doors to two rooms that faced each other, between them the tiny landing I was on. I carefully opened the door to one room and then the other, bracing myself for the screech of old hinges protesting my intrusion. But each door swung surprisingly smoothly, so I looked into each room, then chose the one with furniture in it. I stepped in, studied her bed with its flat pillow and patchwork quilt, a chest of drawers with a small mirror on its top, and her trunk. I walked across the braided rug in the middle of the room and looked out the window. It looked away—away over fields and pastures, away from the house Isaac lived in, the one she’d lived in with him. She could have chosen the other room as her bedroom and seen the house, seen the boys playing outdoors, seen what had been hers. But she hadn’t. She’d chosen this room, and her view was far away, somewhere else, maybe the direction she’d gone when she disappeared. The other room, the one she didn’t choose, was empty, offering only one thing, a view of her old life.

Chapter 7
    “A friend loves at all times,
    and a brother is born for adversity.”
    Kyle Herbert, the good local boy who was looking for a respectable wife, according to my mother, had always been quiet when we were growing up. So quiet I had completely forgotten he existed until Mama mentioned him. And I’d completely forgotten what he looked like until he stood in my doorway, uneasy and nearly invisible behind the girth of my brother. But it was him, and somehow I knew it without a reintroduction. His hair was straight, thick, and brown, hanging over his forehead in much the same style he’d worn it as a boy. He was tall and slender, almost too thin, his face actually nice, something I’d never noticed when we were growing up. I grimaced at the timing, conscious of how filthy I was, a bandana holding my hair back from my sweaty forehead, a few cuts and scrapes on my arms, and a scowl on my face because I knew Paul Junior was only here to taunt me.
    “Whatcha doooo-win?” Paul Junior sang from the doorway.
    I was glad Julianne’s main room was neat and tidy as Paul Junior and Kyle eyed it. The boards were off and the sun shone brightly through the wavy, aged glass of the windows I had carefully scrubbed inside and out. The old lace curtains looked as delicate as white strands of sugar, each hand cleaned and tied back with pieces of cloth I’d found in her sewing basket. “I was just praying God would send someone along to help,” I sassed at my brother, pointing to the bucket of soapy water at my feet.
    “Here, I gotta match in my pocket. That oughta help.” Paul Junior laughed and he turned to see if Kyle was laughing too, but he wasn’t. He was looking around my brother’s beefy form into the main room where I stood, something warm and harmless about the way he observed Julianne’s home.
    “Come in,” I said, my eyes only on Kyle, hoping my brother would take the hint and leave. Even though they were together I could see that this unobtrusive boy I’d known so long ago hadn’t grown up into an overbearing lummox like my brother. Kyle was two years older than me and a year younger than my brother, that middle place that helped keep him invisible to us until today. “It’s nice to see you after all these years. Bet you’ve never been in here, have you?” I swept my arm around the room, gesturing wide because under his