He did not get to choose this, she thought. He chose the last time. He chose for me and for that boy and for a woman in Kansas, alone in a line shack at noon, and he has been living inside that choice for two years and calling it penance. He does not get to choose again.
And neither do I. Not in the dark, not by keeping quiet. I did that once.
She folded the letter and put it back in the tin box and went up the ladder far enough to see over the edge of the loft. Tallis was lying on his back on the robes with his hands behind his head, awake, looking at the roof poles.
"Mr. Marten."
He turned his head.
"When this lets up," she said, "I'm going down with you. To Leadville. Before the judge comes."
He sat up on one elbow. "To do what?"
"To tell him who's in his jail." She held the edge of the loft floor. "And then to Corbel, to tell Hurd and the county who's in that grave. All of it. The finger too. I'll not have your brother go home under a story with a hole in the middle of it."
He looked at her in the dim light from below for a long moment.