lowered her voice. “There’s some cornbread and an apple in the leg of your drawers. I wasn’t sure whether they’d feed you. Everything is fine at home. I’ve fed Charley and the hens and you’re not to worry about anything. It will all be just as you like when you get home.”
“Where’s Sven?”
“He had to go to work. But he’s coming by later.”
“He okay?”
“He’s a little shaken up, actually. Everybody is.”
“Hey! Hey, come over here! I wanna show you something!”
Alice leaned forward, so that her forehead touched the bars of the cell door. “He told us what happened. With the McCullough man.”
Margery closed her eyes for a minute. Her fingers looped around a bar and tightened briefly. “I never set out to hurt no one, Alice.” Margery’s voice cracked.
“Of course you didn’t. You did what anyone would have done.” Alice was firm. “Anyone with half a brain. It’s called self-defense.”
“Hey! Hey! Stop your yammering and come over here, girl. You got something for me, huh? Cos I got something for you.”
Alice turned, her face a fury, and placed her hands on her hips. “Oh, do shut up! I’m trying to talk to my friend! For goodness’ sake!”
There was a brief silence, and then, from the other cell, a whinny of laughter. “Yeah, do shut up! She’s tryin’ to talk to her friend!”
The two men immediately began arguing among themselves, their voices lifting as the air turned blue.
“I can’t stay in here,” Margery said quietly.
Alice was shaken by how Margery looked after only one night in this place, as if all the fight had seeped out of her. “Well, we’re going to work this out. You are not on your own, and we are not going to let anything happen to you.”
Margery looked at her with weary eyes. She set her mouth in a thin line, as if she were stopping herself from speaking.
Alice placed her fingers over Margery’s, trying to grip her hand. “It will all sort itself out. You just try to rest, and eat something, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”
It seemed to take Margery a minute to register what she was saying. She nodded, shifted her gaze to Alice, and then, with a hand on her belly, she moved back to the floor, where she slid slowly down the wall and sat down.
Alice rapped on the metal lock until she had the guard’s attention. He rose heavily from his chair and let her out, closing the gate and eyeing the sheet behind her, from which Margery’s shoulder was just visible.
“Now,” said Alice. “I will be back tomorrow. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to get a slip, but I’m sure there will be no objections to a woman providing basic hygiene and assistance to a mother in waiting. That’s just decency. And I may not have been here very long but I do know that Kentucky people are the most decent of people.”
The guard looked at her, as if unsure how to respond.
“Anyway,” she said, before he could think too hard about it. “I brought you a piece of cornbread to say thank you for being so . . . flexible. It’s a rotten situation, which will hopefully be sorted out very soon, and in the meantime I am much obliged for your kindness, Mr. . . . ?”
The guard blinked heavily. “Dulles.”
“Officer Dulles. There you go.”
“Deputy.”
“Deputy Dulles. I do beg your pardon.” She handed him the cornbread, wrapped in a napkin. “Oh,” she said, as he opened it. “And I’ll want that napkin back. If you could just give it to me tomorrow when I bring the next lot, that would be lovely. Just fold it up. Thank you so much.” Before he could respond, she turned and walked briskly out of the jailhouse.
* * *
• • •
Sven hired a lawyer from Louisville, selling his grandfather’s silver fob watch to raise the money. The man attempted to demand a more reasonable setting of the bail money, but was refused in the baldest of terms. The girl was a murderer, the answer came, from a known family of murderers, and the state would not be satisfied with knowing she was out and free to do the same again. Even when a small crowd gathered outside the sheriff’s office to protest, he was unbending, stating that they could shout all they liked, but it was his job to uphold the law and that was what he was going to do, and if it was their father who had