It was already midday, and the sun had brought the house to a low boil. She fried enough eggs for three, although it was less out of appetite than the amount she was used to seeing on the dining-room table. She was famished, yet there was more than half left when she was done, and she collected the pan and tossed the scraps out back for whatever scavenger might want its fill.
There was an almost catastrophic unease that followed breakfast. She felt the need to busy herself and thought she might clean Caleb’s room, then remembered that this was unnecessary, seeing as she might never see him again if all things went to plan. This thought then met with the greater loneliness of George’s absence, and the convergence of the similar yet distinct tracks of her loss was almost so great she had to sit on her hands just to keep them from trembling. She was there on George’s chair again, feeling with her thighs the buttons protruding from the leather, each of them junction points for memories of her husband. He would sit and read so long it began to feel like he was waiting for something to arrive that never came, and his melancholy when he took his glasses off and extinguished his lamp was matched only by the enthusiasm he showed in returning to that spot the very next night.
And the chair was where she’d found him after her attempt to visit Prentiss in jail. George, his glasses pushed to the end of his nose, had put his book down as she walked inside and asked her eagerly if she’d gotten past Hackstedde.
She hadn’t known until that moment that she would choose not to disclose her meeting with Clementine. But Clementine’s strenuous insistence on the innocence of George’s visits forced her to look inward, at her own jealousy, and question why it had to be there at all. What was there to gain, in the sweeping landscape of her marriage, in meddling with the curious （and often mysterious） manners of George’s charity? After all, wasn’t that why he paid Clementine? The opportunity to give? She’d shaken her head and told George that she wasn’t let in to see Prentiss, but that she had been to see Mildred and that the day, to her, still felt very productive.
The trembling that had overtaken her hands continued—it seemed to be reverberating from somewhere outside her—and she looked up and laid eyes on a team of horses trotting toward the cabin. She wasn’t scared of whoever was approaching. If anything, she was relieved, knowing they were bound to come. She would rather get it over with.
She went outside and met a wind so frantic she had to steady herself against the porch railing. She recognized almost all of them: Wade Webler, the sheriff and his deputy, Gail Cooley from Morton’s plantation. Two others: nondescript men of Caleb’s age, though thoroughly hardened, their eyes fastened on her with disdain. One of them was upon a horse and the other had dismounted and was bringing up the rear with a hound.
“A posse?” she called out. “Really, Wade?”
“Check the barn,” Wade said to the boy with the hound. “It’s where they had him staying.” He turned to Isabelle, his eyes sunken in exhaustion. “Where are they?” he asked bluntly.
“Of whom do you speak?”
“Of whom do I speak. Isabelle, trust me when I say this. You want no part of the stunt your son has pulled. It’s best we get him to safety before he puts other lives beyond his own in harm’s way.”
“We both know the only person putting lives in danger is you, Wade Webler.”
The boy with the hound was entering the barn and she hollered for him to stop. To no avail.
“This is my property,” she said to Sheriff Hackstedde. “I have not given anyone permission to search that barn.”
Yet the sheriff was statue-like.
“You’re an officer of the law,” she went on. “Do your duty.”
Buried in his face was an anger that was missing the last time he’d visited her home. “I have suspicions you’re harboring a fugitive,” he said. “Fugitives. So don’t you tell me about my duty.”
“Bring George out here,” Wade said. “I’d like to speak to him about his son.”
“George is on a hike,” she said, “and I still have no idea what any of you are speaking of. I deserve some answers.”
The hound was baying. She could hear the boy talking to it, and she realized the men on horseback were simply waiting, now—enduring her presence as they must. With a few bellowing howls the hound reappeared and led the boy toward the main road.
“Sounds like we got a scent,” Hackstedde said, perking up.