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were raw, when she hitched herself to the plow like she was a mule, when she had to find strength to keep going in spite of everything, she hadn’t given up because she was tired. She wasn’t going to give up now. It wasn’t in her to give up.
    She stared ahead, facing all her demons. Melanie’s death… Mammy’s death… Rhett’s leaving her, saying that their marriage was dead.
    That was the worst. Rhett going away. That was what she had to meet head-on. She heard his voice: “Nothing’s changed.”
    It couldn’t be true! But it was.
    She had to find a way to get him back. She’d always been able to get any man she wanted, and Rhett was a man like any other man, wasn’t he?
    No, he wasn’t like any other man, and that’s why she wanted him. She shivered, suddenly afraid. Suppose that this time she didn’t win? She had always won, one way or another. She’d always gotten what she wanted, somehow. Until now.
    Above her head a bluejay cried raucously. Scarlett looked up, heard a second jeering cry. “Leave me alone,” she shouted. The bird flew away, a whirr of gaudy blue.
    She had to think, to remember what Rhett had said. Not this morning or last night or whenever it was that Mammy died. What did he say at our house, the night he left Atlanta? He talked on and on, explaining things. He was so calm, so horribly patient, the way you can be with people you don’t care enough about to get mad at them.
    Her mind seized on an almost-forgotten sentence, and she forgot her exhaustion. She had found what she needed. Yes, yes, she remembered it clearly. Rhett had offered her a divorce. Then, after her furious rejection of the offer, he had said it. Scarlett closed her eyes, hearing his voice in her head. “I’ll come back often enough to keep gossip down.” She smiled. She hadn’t won yet, but there was a chance. A chance was enough to go on with. She stood up and picked the pine needles off her frock, out of her hair. She must look a mess.
    The muddy yellow Flint River ran slowly and deeply below the ledge that held the pine woods. Scarlett looked down and threw in the handful of pine needles. They swirled away in the current. “Moving on,” she murmured. “Just like me. Don’t look back, what’s done is done. Move on.” She squinted up at the bright sky. A line of brilliant white clouds was rushing across it. They looked full of wind. It’s going to get colder, she thought automatically. I’d better find something warm to wear this afternoon at the burial. She turned toward home. The sloping pasture looked steeper than she remembered. No matter. She had to get back to the house and tidy herself. She owed it to Mammy to look neat. Mammy had always fussed when she looked messy.

3
     
    S carlett swayed on her feet. She must have been as tired as this sometime before in her life, but she couldn’t remember. She was too tired to remember.
     
    I’m tired of funerals, I’m tired of death, I’m tired of my life falling away, a piece at a time, and leaving me all alone.
    The graveyard at Tara was not very large. Mammy’s grave looked big, ever so much bigger than Melly’s, Scarlett thought disjointedly, but Mammy had shrivelled up so that she probably wasn’t any bigger at all. She didn’t need such a big grave.
    The wind had a bite in it, for all that the sky was so blue and the sun so bright. Yellowed leaves skittered across the burial ground, blown by the wind. Autumn’s coming, if it’s not here already, she thought. I used to love the fall in the country, riding through the woods. The ground looked like it had gold on it, and the air tasted like cider. So long ago. There hasn’t been a proper riding horse at Tara since Pa died.
    She looked at the gravestones. Gerald O’Hara, born County Meath, Ireland. Ellen Robillard O’Hara, born Savannah, Georgia. Gerald O’Hara, Jr.—three tiny stones, all alike. The brothers she’d never known. At least Mammy was being buried here, next to “Miss