"Did he do it?" said Hannah. "What they said?"
Cora sat down on the step beside her. The boards were hot through her skirt.
She thought of the things adults say to children when the truth is too large for the room. Then she thought of the old woman's hand flat over the cross.
"Yes," she said. "He did. A long time ago."
Hannah nodded slowly. She did not cry, though tears would have been easier to sit beside.
"Is it bad?"
"It's very bad," said Cora. "It hurt a family a great deal. It hurt them for a long time."
"But he told."
"Yes. He told."
"Is telling good?"
"Telling is right," said Cora. "That isn't always the same as good. It doesn't put things back. But it's right." She was not sure, as she said it, whether she was talking to the girl or to herself.
They walked down the wash together in the long gold light of the afternoon, and when they came to the place where the path forked toward the Garrity cabin Hannah stopped and looked back at the schoolhouse on its knoll.