The Monday sun rose thick and heavy over Alcolu, the kind of dawn that made the dirt roads sweat and the pine branches hang low. At Mabel Turner's small house, the morning felt just as heavy inside.
Mabel sat at her kitchen table with her husband, Earl, across from her. He was a thin man with sawdust still caught under his fingernails from the mill. His eyes darted to the window every time a car engine coughed on the road.
"You sure about this, Mabel?" he asked, voice cracked with worry. "You know what he said. You know what they do to folks who talk."
Mabel smoothed the back of her boy's hair where he sat eating porridge, oblivious to the storm his mama's courage had stirred up.
"I'm sure," she said, quiet but solid as an oak root. "Ain't no sense hidin' behind the door while they drag that child to the rope. Not if I know better."
Earl pressed his lips tight. He didn't argue. He'd seen his wife stand her ground with less at stake. And he knew better than to think she'd bend now.
---
By midmorning, Elijah was there with her again — this time not just with his notepad, but with two new sheets of paper: an affidavit and a statement he'd typed on borrowed ribbon at the colored church office.
He laid the pages on Mabel's table like an offering and handed her a pen. Her hand shook as she signed her name at the bottom — Mabel Turner, letters careful and looping, truth inked in black that couldn't be washed away with fear.
When she set the pen down, Elijah slipped the papers into his satchel, sealing her words tight inside it like a piece of flint he'd strike when the trial came.
---
But Sheriff Hammond wasn't finished testing how deep Mabel's fear went.
That night, just after supper, a rock crashed through her front window, scattering glass across the linoleum floor. On the rock, tied with twine, was a scrap of butcher paper scrawled in grease pencil: Keep shut or next time we won't miss.
Earl snatched the note, jaw tight. Mabel just swept up the glass in silence, humming under her breath while her boy clutched her skirt.
When the broom was done, she folded the note, pressed it into an old coffee tin, and tucked it on the high shelf.
"That's more truth for the lawyer," she said, voice like flint on stone.
---
Back at the Raya house, word reached Anna before the sun was down. She lit every oil lamp in her tiny parlor, cracked open her front door, and sat on the porch with Caleb and Amie until the night pressed close.
"She ain't alone," Anna whispered. "We ain't alone."
Inside, Elijah sat hunched over his notes by lantern glow. His mind raced through lines of questions, the sheriff's threats, Croft's whispered leaks — all pieces to wedge open a trial meant to close before it began.
---
Down at the jailhouse, Hammond slammed a cabinet shut so hard the tin cups rattled.
"They think they can run their mouths and not pay for it?" he barked at Croft, who stood stiff by the door.
Croft didn't answer. His eyes flicked toward the hallway where Ikrist slept behind bars that weren't meant for boys.
Hammond stabbed a finger at him. "You see that lawyer sniffin' around more, you tell me. He gets too close, I'll shut him down good and proper."
Croft swallowed. The word proper tasted like bile in his mouth.
---
And that night, under the same breathless moon, Mabel sat at her boy's bedside, singing a hymn her mama taught her when the world outside rattled the windows.
Her voice, soft and steady, carried past the cracked glass and the broken threat on the shelf — a promise that some truths, once spoken, don't crawl back into the dark.