The way he said ran away from home made it sound like I was a child who’d snuck out after dark, gotten lost in the woods, and cried until her parents found her. But my leaving had purpose. Laboring under our son’s memory for so many years had bent me beyond repair. And I knew one way or another, Ellard would kill me eventually. He had killed so many Indians in his youth that he’d developed a taste for the violence. I could read the hunger in his eyes every time he looked at me. I should at least make my death worth something.

I staged a fight on the ground floor, scattered the broken furniture Ashton had found me and pinned scraps of the boy, the middle child, all around. He hadn’t been a fighter, but people would believe things of a boy they wouldn’t of a girl, and they had to believe for this to reach them. I put some breaks into the bulk of him with my knife and left him bent into unnatural angles beside the stove. A little ghost stuff and witchfire added to the coal would make it burn cold green, and I left that room with no other light.