the cabin, and she’d carefully dusted the casing dozens of times, ensuring the wooden panels shone with polish from her efforts. The empty space where it had stood seemed larger than it should have, divots in the floorboards pressed deep from the steady pressure of the machine’s weight. The words had tripped off her tongue, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
And Sallabrook had lashed out. And lashed out. And then lashed out again with feet and fists, fingers tangled in her hair as he dragged her from one side of the room to the other and back, Myrt’s feet trying and failing to find purchase against the floor. He’d shoved her legs out wide, and for the first time since her father had passed her into his care, rose above her as he thrust hard, tearing his way into her while face-to-face, his reflexively contorted expression terrifying, all teeth and eyes and hard hands holding her down.
Before that day, she’d toyed with the dream of freedom. Keeping nickels and dimes in a sock she’d wedged into a cubbyhole in the barn stall she’d considered hers, Myrt had slowly built a cache of money that had felt unimaginably huge. Riches galore.
She smoothed the fabric of her nightshirt, trying not to roll her eyes at the ignorance under which she’d labored. Sallabrook had kept her isolated on the mountain as much as possible. He’d allowed regular if infrequent visits with her family and siblings, but what little interaction with outsiders was permitted had always been limited to others in their close-knit community. She’d been a child the last time she remembered going into town with her mother and hadn’t realized the true changed state of the world.
That beating had been so severe, Myrt had been crippled by pain for weeks. There’d been no self-recrimination from Sallabrook, no expression of regret or concern. He’d scooped her off the floor and stalked to the barn, throwing her to the dirt floor just inside the door and turning on his heel without a word. She’d dragged herself to the stall and curled into a ball on her flannel-covered pallet of hay. Four days later, Sallabrook had come out to harangue her for not properly preparing his suit for Sunday services. His only glancing reference to the things he’d done had been a cutting comment about her bruised ugliness making it easier for him to resist Satan.
All of it had set the tone for her life for the next year.
For twelve months, Myrt had wobbled from beating to beating, none as out of control and severe as the first had been, but all tied in some way to that sewing machine. The uncertainty ate at her, and she’d hated how she had come to flinch at any quick movement. She’d quickly learned to study every setting for weapons that could be used against her. And she’d become acquainted with the holler’s witch, an old woman who’d handed down a recipe for an effective herbal tea. Sallabrook might not have cared about leaving his seed inside her, but Myrt was determined it would never take root.
Throughout the year, Myrt’s resolve to leave had strengthened, and she’d gotten even better at finding opportunities to add to her stash of cash. Quarters and paper bills replaced the pennies and other small change. It turned out Sallabrook carried enough money on him on any given day that he didn’t miss a dollar here and there. Or he didn’t think her smart or bold enough to steal from him directly. That year had seen a change in him, too, with his visits to the ’shine man coming more frequently. His drunken snores would fill the cabin as she crept in from the barn to rifle through his wallet, plucked from his back hip as he lay sprawled across the bed.
She cleared her throat gently, quietly, scooting up on the mattress so her back was against the headboard. The window was open, and a light evening breeze had set the sheer curtains into a slight sway. Looking around the room she found herself astonished once again that she was here. Such a far cry from her previous life, where even the luxury of the headboard was strange. The bed was tall, mattresses unbelievably soft, so different from the hard, cotton-ticking one Sallabrook had. The stripes of welts across her back ached, but it was the kind of pain that helped center her, so instead of avoiding it, she leaned